Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The thousands of Assyrian and Chaldean Iraqis who live in my electorate have come here under the refugee and humanitarian program over a period of 10 to 15 years. I have endeavored over time to get to know them and as such I have developed good relationships with many of their key community representatives through the many local community organizations that have formed in my electorate.

Today, I would like to make special mention of the Popular Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of Victoria and one of its founding and key members, Mr Sam Nissan. The council is an advocacy group for the needs of the Iraqi community in Australia, but also raises awareness in the broader community about the continuing plight of Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christian communities in Iraq. It also advocates and calls for national unity amongst the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac people in order to advance their political interests in Iraq.

Mr Sam Nissan leads the community's advocacy and tireless appeals to the Australian government, both current and past, to do its utmost to ensure that the Christian minorities in Iraq are able to look to a more stable and less violent future.

Mr Sam Nissan from the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council of Victoria is one of the driving forces in our local community, always present at the various activities and celebrations, and is a man who is dedicated to ensuring that human rights violations in Iraq are not forgotten or overlooked by the global community. Sam believes strongly in the capacity, and indeed responsibility, of the Iraqi diaspora to raise awareness about the continuing attacks on the Christian communities in Iraq, but also he believes that it is necessary to introduce to their new homeland, Australia, the many wonderful cultural traditions that they are very proud of.

One such event is the Babylonian-Assyrian new year, which is known as the Aketo festival, celebrated on 1 April each year and now in the year 6,763. The Aketo festival is one of the oldest recorded festivals in the world and has been celebrated for several millennia throughout ancient Mesopotamia. This year's celebrations included a statement regarding the fragile political and security situation in Iraq. Sam Nissan, who delivered the statement to me, said it was his community's hope that governments around the world, and in particular in Australia, would do all they could to ensure the safety and human rights of the people in Iraq and provide humanitarian support to stop the bloodshed and respect the will of the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac people. I want to commend community activists like Sam Nissan and the Iraqi Christian communities in my electorate for the tremendous amount of work that they do. I also seek leave to table Mr Nissan's statement to the chamber.

Leave granted.

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