ARMENIA
- Current Issues
- Country Background, Politics & Law
- Human Rights Issues
- Security, Humanitarian Issues and Protection Related Issues
- Nagorno-Karabakh
Human Rights Issues
10.2002 - Source: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
The current Assyrian population in Armenia is of the order of 8 000, about 500 reside in Yerevan. ("The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia") [#9856], [ID 3073]
"The Assyrians today mostly confess the Nestorian or Assyrian Church of the East, the Jacobite
Monophysite Church and the Assyro-Chaldaic Church affiliating the Nestorians who joined the
Unity with the Roman Catholic Church. Most Assyrians in Armenia and the SIC countries confess
Orthodoxy.
[...]
Schools with Assyrian attendance practice elective instruction of the Assyrian language. Virtually
all members of the Assyrian community are fluent in Armenian and Russian. Allocated to them
annually by the RA Ministry of Education are hors de concourse places at the Department of
Oriental Studies, Yerevan State University, within the framework of training teachers from among
National Minorities.
The current Assyrian population in Armenia is of the order of 8 000, about 500 reside in Yerevan.
The total population worldwide is 350 000 (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Western
Europe, US).
[...]
The traditional economic activity of the Assyrians in Armenia is agriculture, gardening and
viniculture; distant-pasture stock breeding is prevailing among the Assyrians of Iran, Iraq, Turkey
and Syria; in Russia it is the handicrafts. A large stratum in Armenia is also constituted by the
intellectuals, including the class of government employees. To be noted as a whole, is a high degree
of integration.
The mixed Assyro-Armenian marriages are quite high on the percentage scale, this situation
being also noted in the Diaspora with adjacent Armenian and Assyrian communities.
Historically, the Assyrians have always been described as men of gallantry, nearly always siding
with the Armenians in rebellious situations. Along with other Christian populations they have been
the subject of genocide within the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian and the Assyrian nations have
always been attached not only by confessional consensus, but rather by many centuries of
collaboration and the correlative historical predestination."
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