In the summer of 2005, Swedish documentary producer Håkan Berthas and I travelled to Turabdin (worshippers mountain) in southeast Turkey. We were there to shoot a TV-series about Assyriska, a Swedish based football team, and had devoted one of the episodes to the killing of Christians that was carried out by the Turkish Ottomans during World War I. We were staying closeby in Midyat, the city where I was born, when someone quietly informed us that a Kurdish family had occupied an Assyrian/Syriac family’s house and taken control of their vineyard in the village of Aynward. This little village would prove to be rich with a dark history relating to the Christian genocide at the turn of the century.
Once in Aynward, it didn’t take long for the village’s dark turbulent past to boil over to the present day. Things got heated as soon as we had arrived, Guns were pointed directly at us and at a man from the family that was claiming their houses and lands had been occupied. An older woman ran up to us and screamed in our faces “we should have exterminated you while we had the chance, this is our village now!”
When things calmed down, Håkan and I went to the Syriac-Orthodox church in the village where the priest showed us a grave of a martyr who died during the genocide. The village of Aynward sits high on a hill, many Assyrian/Syriacs fled there during the Ottoman led massacres that targeted Midyat and its surrounding villages. This hero had left his family behind, knowing full well the inevitability of his being killed. He took a chance with his life in order to save as many of his innocent people as he could. He was a trained engineer and when he heard that there was not a single bullet left to protect his people against the Muslim troops closing in on Aynward, he took action. The village women were organized and tasked with collecting anything made of iron, he then helped the men organize a small workshop where they could melt the iron and cast bullets to use against the advancing hordes. Back in the graveyard of the village he would not recognize today, the old dusty forgotten stones marking his grave, did not do justice to his story; they belied the bravery and strength this man had shown in the face of hatred and evil against his people. His story stuck with me, it followed me everywhere on that trip, constantly being retold in my mind.
When I returned to Sweden I received a shock. That man that had been referred to as “the hero” in Aynward was related to me. He was my beloved grandmother Meyyo’s father, he was maternal great-grandfather, Sha’e Gundoro-Kino, from the Melkemir tribe. I was stunned and inspired to devote a year researching his remarkable history. A few years earlier I had produced a movie about the Christian genocide at the hands of the Ottomans and had collected a lot of material, including interviews with around fifty genocide survivors.
Ever since I was a child I have dreamed of seeing our history, our trauma, the history of our persecution become a big Hollywood movie. That movie is now here.
Last Wednesday I spoke to Eric Esrailian, the producer of the movie The Promise. He is a medical doctor; why did he enter the film industry? “I have not made a movie, I followed a mission given to me by my mentor, Kirk Krekorian. When he first spoke to me about what at that time was a very secret movie project, I felt very honoured, but also very nervous. I had never produced a movie before, and certainly not one about a genocide that has been silenced. ”While Esrailian passionately spoke about the production of the movie, that many have reached out, telling him how The Promise have changed their lives, how they now understand what their grandparents went through, it suddenly hits me that he has an Armenian sounding last name. I have aunts that are married to Armenians. I interrupted him and asked him if he perhaps has a personal relation to the genocide.
Bam. His family’s faith is being rolled up, in many ways very similar to mine. Places. Occurrences. Massacres.
Our families were just a few miles apart when they were slaughtered. In the movie, The Promise there is a scene with an Armenian choir. Esrailian’s relatives were part of that choir. The movie is entirely financed by billionaire Kirk Krekorian who is mainly known for building the world’s biggest hotel in Las Vegas and for owning the movie company Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in the past. He passed away in 2015 and sadly will not be able to see his beloved project The Promise premiere in cinemas worldwide.
“The movie is of course a reminder about the genocide in 1915, but it is also a work that should remind us about all crimes committed against humanity and our duty to stop them”, says Esrailian.
Esrailian has now gotten big Hollywood names such as Christian Bale, Oscar Isaak, Ryan Gosling, Jennifer Lopez, Cher och George Clooney on board and to post videos on social media with the title ”I vow to keep the promise.”
On the anniversary of the 1915 massacre of millions of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac, Armenian, and Greek people, U.S. President Donald Trump joined his predecessors in failing to recognize the historic suffering as Genocide. The organization I am part of, A Demand For Action’s executive director Steve Oshana shared his analysis on the continuation of the denial policy with the Huffington Post.
“The use of the genocide label mattersfor a range of reasons, including because it helps the ongoing court battles of families trying to win back stolen property and could deter further human rights abuses by Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian government”.
Huffpost describes A Demand For Action (ADFA) like this. ”His organization was at the center of the fight to make Congress and the Obama administration acknowledge the so-called Islamic State’s assault on minority groups, notably Christians and Yazidis, as a genocide.”
In Sweden, where I live, our parliament has recognized the genocide committed by the Turks on the Armenian, Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean and Greek minorities during World War I. The Social democratic party promised in the latest election that they too would recognize the genocide. But in the party’s congress this year, things had changed. They already had reached government power and now simply did not stand by their promise. There is another genocide happening as we speak, the same minorities are being targeted, history is repeating itself, and yet both the Swedish government and parliament are choosing to turn their heads, and close their eyes to it, and to not recognize the genocide for what it was and what it still is, a blatant slaughter, a murder on a massive scale, a targeting of people based on their ethnicity and their religion, if this was, and still is, not genocide, then what is?
I vow to keep the promise. I am joining the movement. So do all others in A Demand For Action (ADFA), we vow to keep the promise.
*Babilona Khosravi from Sweden and Evette Haddad from Canada also contributed to this report