A Demand For Action

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A Demand For Action

A Demand for Action: From a Social Media Campaign to International Advocacy and Aid Organization It was a grassroots movement that grew spontaneously.

A Demand for Action: From a Social Media Campaign to International Advocacy and Aid Organization

A Demand for Action (ADFA) has its origins when the persecution of Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans and other Middle Eastern minorities had reached a crisis point. In 2014, ISIS extremists invaded the Plains of Nineveh in Northern Iraq and unleashed their reign of terror on the ancestral homelands of the i

ndigenous people of the country. On June 10, when Mosul fell to the terrorist group, an estimated 500,000 civilians fled the city in a panic, among them 200,000 Christians and 200,000 Yazidis. It was time to act and to demand action from the world’s leaders. Led by investigative journalist and human rights activist, Nuri Kino, a group of 25 Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans from 12 different countries launched a massive international social media campaign on July 2, 2014, alerting hundreds of parliamentarians and other leading decision makers to the unfolding tragedy, and demanding that they take forceful action to stop the carnage, and protect these Middle Eastern minorities. The campaign was unique in that we did not represent any political or religious organization. We were, and are still acting as a free non-profit organization of concerned individuals. Following our social media blitz, it was no longer possible for the world’s political leaders to claim ignorance of the existential crisis facing Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs. We also expressed our solidarity with the other minority peoples of Iraq and Syria, including but not limited to Mandeans, Shabaks, Yazidis, and Turkomens, all of whom face similar struggles to safeguard their security and their right to freedom of religion or belief, also to ensure their continuing presence in their ancestral homeland. If we had not acted immediately to demand protection and support for the minorities of Iraq and Syria, they probably would have been exterminated—a tragedy that could still occur, given their declining numbers. And with the extermination of Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs, the legacy of one of the world’s oldest indigenous people—inheritors of one of the world’s most ancient civilizations— would disappear, leaving a stain on humanity’s conscience forever. We are aware that the danger of these minorities being driven from their homelands still persists. The number of Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs in the Middle East has greatly dwindled during the last 20 years. For the first time in history, there are more of them in the worldwide diaspora than in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. Over the years, ADFA (A Demand For Action) grew into an international humanitarian aid organization in addition to maintaining its advocacy role and giving a voice to voiceless persecuted Middle Eastern minorities. We have coordinated refugee aid projects in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Armenia. Currently we are in Warsaw, engaged in the work of assisting thousands of Ukrainian refugees who have fled the Russian invasion and made their way to Poland. And we are still helping refugees in Lebanon and Syria. We invite you to follow our work on our social media channels. Facebook: www.facebook.com/DemandForAction
Twitter: www.twitter.com/DemandForAction
Instagram: http://instagram.com/ademandforaction

We welcome discussions on these channels, al though there are a few ground rules to keep in mind, in order to maintain a constructive and respectful dialogue. Commercial messages, spam (including unrelated links), po*******hy, and other obscene or unrelated material will be removed at the discretion of the administrators. Threats, harassment, personal attacks, or incendiary language based on race, religion, s*x, s*xual orientation, age, or disability are strictly prohibited. We are a human rights organization and believe in the dignity and worth of every human being, so we will ensure that this code of conduct is respected in all interactions on our social media spaces. If you believe a comment which didn’t violate our terms of use was removed, please send your request for reconsideration to [email protected]

04/09/2026

She fought for 26 days. Now Christine is the bombing’s first death.

On the evening of August 6th, a minibus was rolling through the al-Rawda junction in Jaramana, a crowded Druze and Christian suburb four kilometres from the center of Damascus, when a bomb hidden inside it went off. The roof was torn away. Fourteen passengers were wounded, three of them critically. Among the critically wounded was Christine Milad al-Helo, a young woman from the Christian village of Maaroune who had made her home in Jaramana with her husband, Wanis Balian, and their daughter, Joelle.

She fought for twenty-six days. On Tuesday, September 1st, she died.

Syria’s Health Ministry had at first announced two dead, then withdrew the claim: three severed limbs pulled from the wreckage turned out to belong to survivors on the operating table. The official count was revised to fourteen wounded and none killed. Christine al-Helo is the bombing’s first confirmed death. Friends learned of it not from the state but from one another, in a wave of tributes on social media. The Catholic agency ACI MENA carried the news; Syrian authorities have yet to confirm it.

Jaramana is the kind of place that absorbs other people’s catastrophes. When Iraqi Christians fled the massacres of the 2000s, many of them landed here. Hours before the blast, the town’s sheikhs and elders had issued a statement affirming coexistence and the unity of the Syrian state.

A previously unknown extremist group claimed the attack on a WhatsApp channel, calling it a ”third warning.” The channel first surfaced on July 13th with sectarian messages aimed at Jaramana’s Druze and Christians. On August 2nd it boasted of a ”cyber arm” that had gathered personal data on Druze residents, and promised attacks. The government has not verified the claim. The Interior Ministry says it is still collecting evidence.

No one chose Christine al-Helo. A bomb under a seat does not choose. What was chosen was the city, and the people who live in it.

Rest in peace. Aloho mhaselekh.

ADFA continues to monitor the development in Syria.

02/09/2026

Midyat property notice unsettles Assyrian/Syriac diaspora

A notice from the Municipality of Midyat requiring property owners to file declarations has stirred unease among Assyrians/Syriacs abroad, many of whom still own homes, fields and other property in the town and surrounding villages.

Midyat lies at the heart of Tur Abdin, an ancient center of Syriac Christianity whose churches, monasteries and Aramaic-speaking communities have endured for centuries. Persecution, the 1915 genocide known as Seyfo, economic hardship and decades of conflict drove much of the Christian population to Europe and beyond.

Many families kept their homes and inherited land. Some return each summer. The properties remain a tangible link to a place their families called home for generations.

On April 29, 2026, the municipality issued a public notice citing Turkey’s Property Tax Law No. 1319, reminding owners of land, buildings and other real estate to file the required declarations within the legal deadline. Gazete Sabro, a Turkish- and Syriac-language newspaper based in Midyat, later reported that a similar notice had gone to village and neighborhood heads, known as muhtars, stating that owners who failed to file could face penalties.

The requirement appears to apply to all property owners in the district, not only Assyrians/Syriacs.

Sabri Yıldız, who lives in Sweden and comes from ‘Ayn Wardo, officially Gülgöze, wrote in the Facebook group Platform Tur Abdin, as quoted by Syriac Press, that many fields are cultivated by villagers through powers of attorney, often to support those who stayed behind. In the mountainous villages around Midyat, he said, fertilizer, diesel and labor can cost more than the harvest is worth. He asked whether the diaspora was being seen ”as cows to be milked” because it is assumed to be well off, or whether this was a new way of driving Syriacs away from their villages.

ADFA has spoken to several families in Sweden. For them, a house in Midyat or a field in an ancestral village is worth far more than its market price. It is proof that they still belong.
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29/08/2026

Assyrian/Syriac parties absent from Qamishli centenary as Syria weighs ethnic recognition
On August 20, Qamishli, in Syriac Beth Zalin, marked its centenary. Those who stayed away make an ethnic claim, not a religious one: they helped found the city and want standing as a people, not a church. In Azadi Park stood the region’s administrators, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi and a transitional government delegation. Syriac Press called it an absence of the Syriac people. The church had a place, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop was listed for the diocese. The parties had none. The Syriac Union Party, the Assyrian Democratic Organization and allied institutions said the program gave them no political voice and ignored their people’s part in founding it. Several boycotted. Jacob Mirza of the European Syriac Union said it became a municipality only in 1926, under French mandate, but Assyrian/Syriac work in economy, culture, religion and architecture came first, and Christians of that community were over half the city by the 1930s. He asked for organization, not only online protest, and a clearer record of it in Gozarto, the Jazira.
The same week, Syriac Press reported, the Ministry of Education adopted one framework, the Damascus curriculum, ending years of rival systems. Kurdish is to be elective. Shmuni Hardo of the Syriac Olaf Taw Association welcomed it but demanded the same for Syriac, citing the constitution on cultural communities. Hours, place and whether Syriac could be a language of instruction remain unsettled.
In the same city the Syriac Progressive Youth Union gathered thirty young people at St. Fabronia Church in Himo for a workshop, ”Youth and Belonging.” Maryana Gabriel Hanna called it part of a longer program: to listen, not occupy. They spoke of belonging, difference and the bonds of faith, homeland, language and identity, even as rifts entered families. Ruslan, a participant, called it a space where disagreement need not become enmity.
The three point to one argument: how the city is remembered, what is taught, who may speak. Whether the new order will treat them as a people is open.
ADFA continues to follow developments in Syria closely.

28/08/2026

He prayed in his mother tongue. Then he called for a hate-speech law.

On Wednesday, 26 August, sat at his bench in the Iraqi parliament and prayed in Syriac, his mother tongue, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He then called for a law banning hate speech.

He chairs Soyana, the Christian parliamentary group that holds three seats after the November 2025 election. With him are Sami Oshana and Emad Youkhanna. From 2022 to 2026 he was director general of Syriac Culture and Arts in Ankawa, outside Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital. It is one of Iraq’s largest remaining Christian communities, with Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriac churches, schools and associations. Oghanna was born there in 1983.

Iraq reserves five parliamentary seats for Christians. Soyana was formed in December 2025 so those seats would not remain a formality. The fight, as Oghanna frames it, is straightforward. Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs are an indigenous people of Iraq. His message is that they, other Christians, and Iraq’s minorities and indigenous groups, including Yazidis and Mandaeans, should be able to stay and live as equals with the majority, not as guests on their own land.

The same day as the parliamentary clip, he met researcher Saad Salloum in Baghdad. They discussed a law against incitement.

Oghanna also points to the Nineveh Plain in Iraq, where war and displacement have thinned Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac towns.

There is no official religious census. Church leaders and the U.S. State Department put Iraq’s Christians at about 1.4 million before 2003. By 2014, on the eve of ISIS terrorism, the community had been cut in half. Today estimates range from under 150,000 to about 400,000. Most who left have not returned, and families still leave. Hate speech is part of what drives them out: sermons, posts and street talk that mark Christians and other minorities as outsiders. That is why Oghanna wants it banned.

Oghanna holds three seats out of 329. A hate-speech law needs a majority he lacks. He can put the language and the demand on camera. On Wednesday, he did both.

20/08/2026

SYRIA IS NOW THE SIXTH-WORST COUNTRY FOR CHRISTIANS. NADER TANNOUS HAD JUST MOVED BACK.
Open Doors has moved Syria from eighteenth to sixth on its World Watch List of Christian persecution. Scoring ninety out of a hundred, it is the worst period for Christians there since ISIS.
Syria’s interim leadership emerged from HTS. A constitutional declaration adopted in March 2025 concentrates power in the presidency and makes Islamic jurisprudence the main source of legislation. Pressure is greatest in Damascus and Aleppo, while converts face the greatest personal risk. In June 2025, a su***de bomber killed twenty-five people at Mar Elias Church in Damascus.
Nader Boulos Tannous was forty-six. He had fled the war, built a life in Sweden and become a Swedish citizen. Then he went home.
He restored his family’s house in al-Kayma, outside Homs, and opened a women’s hair salon. Friends say he spoke of rebuilding his life and working as a hairdresser again.
On August 15, as he returned from work in Karm al-Louz, gunmen opened fire. A family source told the Swedish outlet Alkompis that three bullets struck his shoulder, side and chest. He died where he fell.
He was his parents’ only son. They buried him the next day at Mar Elias Church in al-Kayma.
The family knows of no dispute or threat. It has accused no one and awaits the investigation. Nader was Christian, Swedish and a hairdresser. None of this has been shown to be the reason he was killed.
Greece condemned the killing, demanded an investigation and called for the protection of every community. Its Foreign Ministry noted the date: the Dormition of the Theotokos.
ADFA contacted Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It had seen the reports but said it was not working on such a case. Deaths abroad do not necessarily become ministry cases, it said, and no one is obliged to report one.
In recent weeks, Christian Rani Halawa was found dead near Damascus. Elias Khazaal, also Christian, was freed after forty-one days. The body of nineteen-year-old law student Ibrahim Mousa Mieh was recovered in Homs.
ADFA continues to monitor the situation in Syria.

17/08/2026

A SYRIAN CHRISTIAN RETURNS HOME FROM SWEDEN AND IS SHOT DEAD IN HOMS

According to our sources on the ground in Homs, along with reports in Swedish, Arabic and Syriac media, 46-year-old Nader Boulos Tannous was shot dead in Homs on Saturday, August 15.

Tannous was a Syrian Christian from the village of al-Kayma in the Homs countryside. He had left Syria during the war and lived in Sweden. He became a Swedish citizen in 2021.

But Syria remained home. Tannous decided to return. Friends in Sweden say he had spoken about wanting to rebuild his life there and work again in his profession as a hairdresser. He had begun restoring the family home in al-Kayma and was working in Homs, where he had opened a women’s hair salon.

On Saturday evening, he was returning from work to his home in the Karm al-Louz neighborhood when gunmen opened fire. A family source told the Swedish news outlet Alkompis that Tannous was struck by three bullets, in the shoulder, side and chest, and died at the scene. Earlier reports gave a different account of his wounds, but all agree that he was shot while returning home from work and that his killers remain unidentified.

His family says it knows of no dispute, threat or problem that might explain the killing. They have accused no one and are waiting for the investigation.

Tannous was Christian. His funeral was held at Mar Elias Church in his village of al-Kayma. Reports describing the killing have drawn attention to the insecurity facing civilians in Syria, including members of Christian communities.

What we do not know matters as much as what we know. There is, at this point, no established motive. We cannot say that Nader was murdered because he was Christian, because he had returned from Sweden, or because of his work. Those questions remain unanswered.

What is known is simple. A man left a country shattered by war, made a life in Sweden, became a Swedish citizen, and chose to go home. He opened a business and began rebuilding the family house. Then, on his way home from work, he was shot dead.

Nader Boulos Tannous was 46 years old.

We have contacted the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and will continue to follow this case.

14/08/2026

The Camp Is Up. The Work Is Underway.

In La Guaira, in earthquake-torn Venezuela, a new relief camp is now in full swing, built to shelter families displaced when the earthquake struck.

Some of you may remember the pastor from North Carolina who fought to gather and ship aid to Venezuela. That is how we came to know Pastor Winston Parrish. Now he is on the ground in La Guaira, and that fight has become a camp.

The tent and cargo were offloaded, and he and his team worked through the night to prepare the site. It is already taking shape as the heart of the operation.

The tent will serve as the hub for the community: food, water and medicine in one place, and somewhere for children to play, away from the debris and out of the sun.

Families are beginning to move in. Alongside the tent, semi-permanent housing will be built, small, sturdy homes with metal roofs, one for each family.

This Sunday, four churches will come together for a single service. The pastors will take turns preaching and sharing meals, caring for their community even as many of them carry their own losses.

"This is just the beginning. There is much work to do."
Pastor Winston Parrish

This camp is the work of Trinity Baptist Church and Hearts with Hands, together with local organizations and the Mayor of La Guaira.

In his formal request to Pastor Winston Parrish, Mayor José Manuel Suárez Maldonado wrote:

"The proven experience of Pastor Winston Parrish and Trinity Baptist Church in international disaster response is an invaluable opportunity for our people in this hour of need."

At ADFA, we are deeply proud of what is taking shape in La Guaira, and grateful beyond words. Our thanks go to Pastor Winston Parrish, to our friend Gary Wasserson, and to everyone who has given so much to make this possible.

Please keep the people of La Guaira, and everyone serving on the ground, in your thoughts and prayers.

09/08/2026

TWO IMAGES OF SYRIA, BUT ONLY ONE REALITY

There are two versions of Syria today.

In Western meeting rooms, politicians and diplomats speak of stability, reconstruction and a transition moving in the right direction. Sanctions are being lifted, delegations are travelling to Damascus and the new authorities are welcomed back into the international community.

The other reality can be found in Saydnaya, a historic centre of Syrian Christianity.

The town’s Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Melkite Greek Catholic parishes have cancelled all public celebrations scheduled for August and September.

There will be no processions, scouts or carnivals. Services will take place only inside the churches.

The suspension will remain until detained residents are released, abducted people return and the targeting of the town’s youth ends. The parishes report arrests without disclosed evidence, abductions, threats and online campaigns portraying Christians as supporters of the former Assad regime.

Saydnaya is not an isolated case. In Marmarita, the summer carnival has been cancelled for the second year. Following the attack on the predominantly Christian town of Suqaylabiyah in March, Easter observances were confined to churches. In June 2025, at least 25 people were killed during a service at Mar Elias Church in Damascus.

The fall of the Assad regime brought genuine hope after decades of dictatorship. But a transfer of power does not become a democratic transition simply because the outside world calls it one.
When church bells may ring, but people no longer feel safe enough to celebrate in the streets, that is not religious freedom. It is fear, with permission to pray indoors.

ADFA is monitoring developments and remains in contact with local representatives, churches and affected communities inside Syria. What they tell us often differs sharply from the picture presented by politicians and media in the West.

Syria must be judged by whether people can live openly, celebrate their faith, wear their crosses and return home from church without being detained, abducted or killed.

That is where the truth about the new Syria will be found.

06/08/2026

They Redistribute Our Homeland While the World Looks Away

In the ancient plains east of Mosul, where the soil bears the imprint of empires and scars of recent crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide recognized by the UN, U.S. Congress and European Parliament, the Assyrian Democratic Movement, the Beth Nahrain Patriotic Union and the Assyrian Patriotic Party protested to Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi and Nineveh Governor Abdul Qader Al-Dakhil.

They demanded a halt to residential plots and building permits in the Nineveh Plains before its demographic character is permanently altered.

The authorities prevented the rally from entering Tel Kepe, an action the parties say also violated Iraqi law.

Delivered through Tel Kaif’s (Tel Kepe) acting district commissioner, Yasser Al-Assaf, the memorandum says the measures violate Iraq’s constitution, particularly Article 23 (Third)(b), which prohibits acquiring property for demographic change. For the indigenous Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people, this is no routine planning. It is another assault on a historic homeland eroded as more than a million of their people have fled Iraq over two decades.

The protest follows a lawsuit by Shabak parliamentarian Qusay Abbas, who accuses the Nineveh Provincial Council of enabling demographic change by allowing Mosul municipality to subdivide expansion zones and distribute plots. A zoning decision can transform identity and the rule of law.

Once a dense constellation of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac villages, the Nineveh Plains were emptied by the Islamic State in 2014. Reconstruction remains uneven. Accumulating land decisions have become one of the gravest threats to those who remain.

The parties call on the federal government to enforce constitutional protections and treat the Plains as a protected historic space, not an open frontier for expansion. Without restraint, a demographic balance of centuries will collapse.

ADFA is following developments and remains in contact with USCIRF, the International Religious Freedom Summit and other partners to carry these communities’ voices onto the international stage.

Video: Suroyo TV and Tebe.

04/08/2026

Six years ago today.
At 6:07 in the evening on August 4, 2020, the port of Beirut exploded. More than 200 people were killed. Thousands were wounded. A city was torn open in less than a minute.
We followed it live. Our volunteers sent us what they were seeing while the dust was still in the air. We started coordinating that same evening.
But today is not about us.
It is about the firefighters who drove toward the hangar and never came home. The doctors and nurses who worked through the night, many of them injured themselves. The young people who came out the next morning with brooms and swept their city by hand.
We share Live Love Beirut’s video with the names of everyone who died that day. Read them. They are not a number.
We are back in Lebanon. Two containers from Sweden are in the port right now with hygiene articles and medical supplies. Once released, everything will be distributed together with
We love Lebanon. We are not finished here.
Thank you for the emotional and most important video.

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