PPCU and Salahaddin University-Erbil has enlisted the Hungarian Deputy for the Aid of Persecuted Christians to organize an international scientific meeting between 19th and 21st of April. The title of the symposium, FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NATIONS UNDER GENOCIDE, has already indicated that it is dedicated to one of the direst problems known in Modern History, which has proven especially relevant from the twentieth century until today.

During his opening speech Dr. Szabolcs Szuromi DSc., President of PPCU wished to remind the plenum that genocide, the relocation or in some cases, destruction of certain groups; the separation of children from their parents and assimilation to another culture are phenomena present for many centuries.
We have encountered them since the ancient times, but they have not been defined in legal terms before.
NATO's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 was a first in its kind. It is still debated today what should be labelled as genocide, and what is 'solely' war crime or crime against humanity – continued Dr. Szuromi. The notion of genocide should not be widened carelessly, as it involves the risk of losing its true meaning and thus its gravity. However Dr. Szuromi emphasized that each and every act with the aim of deportation and genocide is unacceptable, unworthy of mankind and against universal humanity.

István Ötvös, professor of PPCU and moderator of the conference has stated that the three days symposium has further enabled the conceptual clarification of the genocide, ethnic cleansing and crime against humanity. Anba Ermia Coptic Bishop has also pronounced that any violent change in existing borders, the forced birth of new states on the margin of political interests of superpowers open a straight way to genocide and ethnic cleansing.
We have encountered a number of dramatic historic examples when communities, who may not want to live together are forced to do so by a great power, which could lead to religious or ethnic confrontation.
During his introductory lecture István Ötvös has raised the question: when and what had changed in politics that deportation, ethnic cleansing and even genocide transitioned to be an acceptable tool for politicians? He came to the conclusion that two fundamental bidirectional changes have been made since the French Revolution. One is surely the rise of mass society and mass politics. From the end of the eighteenth century the political opinion of the masses became more influential than ever before. Since then causing mass terror with the aim of eliminating political opponents came to existence. He considers the other source to be the idea of Absolute War originating in the era of the French Revolution.

The lecturers of the conference mainly focused on the history of the twentieth-century genocide in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Many of them has cited Professor Raphael Lemkin, who created the concept of genocide from the Greek genos (race or tribe) and the Latin cide (to kill) words in 1943. The symposium has covered the Armenian Genocide during the First World War, the aspect of the Kurdish and Yazidis minority, the fate of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, the violent acts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union against ethnic groups and the Holocaust.
Metropolitan Nicodemus Daoud Matti Sharaf, Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Mosul stressed that one of the aims of the conference is to draw attention to what is actually happening today in the Middle East.
The ancient Aramic community of Mosul, which has counted millions in the past has shrunk considerably, resulting to Christian culture being threatened by eventual annihilation. The Metropolitan himself was forced to flee to Erbil by ISIS, where he works to reorganize the community.

Mohammed Ihsan, lecturer of the International University of Erbil has spoken about Kurdish Genocide committed during the regime of Saddam Hussein, first in 1979, then in 1983 and later in 1987-88.
According to Professor Ihsan, Saddam wouldn't have been able to succeed alone, unless he had gained the support of at least part of the society to construct the mechanism which served both himself and his agenda. The atrocities against the Kurdish people were investigated in Iran, during which mass graves were unearthed, but in the end only a handful of people were held responsible for thousands of deaths.
How can the Kurdish society process the trauma of the past? – asked Professor Ihsan. He asked the Kurdish people to forgive, but never forget. Professor Ihsan concluded that every nation which had to endure genocide as the Kurds, can only be protected in the future if they are to create an independent state with the power to take care of its own people.

A different section was dedicated to the fate of Yazidi minority. Firmesk Murad Haso from Kurdistan briefly introduced the history of his people. The Yazidis are an ethnically Kurdish religious community indigenous to northern Mesopotamia who are strictly endogamous. Their religion, Yazidism is linked to ancient Mesopotamian religions and combines aspects of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Their worshipers should turn their face toward the sun, which resulted in various denomination for the group.
Tolerant to any religion that celebrates peace and happiness of mankind, the Yazidi religion is not prone to proselytism. Yet the Yazidis were a target of numerous ethnic cleansing and political genocide. Extremist opposing the Yazidis considered the murder of a member of their group to be an "honor killing". Due to the permanent fear the Yazidis reside in closed communities in the North-Western hills of Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Turkey.

His Grace Abna Ermia Coptic Bishop's presentation focused on present-day's religiously-motivated genocide directed at Christians living in Eastern regions in connection with the bombing murders in Egypt. He brought the plenum's attention to the fact that we must combine forces to hinder the spread of Christian persecution to Europe.

Bianka Speidl, colleague of the Migration Research Institute (HU) has introduced the religious Islamic scripts and their interpretation which serve the ideology for the atrocities. There are many expressions of violence in the Qur'an and other documents in which sense they are no different from the sacred records of Christianity or Judaism.
The radical conservative interpretation of the Qur'an outline such pro-violence texts and in their literal interpretation elevates them to a more significant position in which they define and establish their relation to non-Muslims.

Hanga Sántha, another researcher of the Migration Research Institute spoke of religious conflicts that were imported through migration. She studied - based on a fieldwork carried out in Germany last year - what is happening in Europe with Christian asylum seekers? The reception facilities often report news of mainly Sunni asylum seekers abusing non-Muslims, which are often ignored nonetheless. During these atrocities the non-Muslims are a subject physical, oral, mental abuse and are forced to partake in Islamic rituals. Researcher Sántha has also met converted Christians who were Christian in Iran and have fled to Europe hoping to be protected, but encountered the very same situation they were avoiding. In some situation it proved to be even worse since the converted were locked together with their persecutors.

Abdullah O. Yassen from Erbil focused on armed conflicts between ISIS and minorities, including Christians. He hopes to pass an international law with the assistance of NATO which would enable the punishment of atrocities committed by ISIS, similarly to the amendment after the Yugoslav Wars.

Amatzia Baram from the University of Haifa analyzed how movements since the fall of the Ottoman Empire until today, such as the Great Arab Revolt against the British, following the internal ethnic collision and extreme political views have claimed many victims in all countries of the region, with external powers sometimes escalating the conflict.

Regarding the ethnic cleansing against Armenians during First World War and even before Professor Harutyun Marutyan from Armenia has outlined how in the light of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide the interpretation of the acts and concept has been accentuated, since international law still hasn't concluded whether the cruelties against the Armenian people can be considered a genocide. Even now there are undeniably controversial differences between the Armenian and Turkish states and people, but the historical trauma may serve as a common ground for the two states to seek the possibility of new types of connections.
Professor Harutyun Marutyan researches the role Turks played in rescuing Armenians. Were there any Turkish people or communities who had undertaken to save Armenians and if so, what was their motivation? He considers the similar and mutual experiences between the two nations the essence of future communication. Even so, the dialogue may only start from now on, as the past millennia was unsuitable for it.

Bálint Kovács, lecturer of PPCU has conferred about one of the literary represenation of the Armenian Genocide. The volume titled "Red moon" was published in Hungarian by the Armenian priest who fled to the Transylvanian Csíkszépvíz. Magardici Bodurian wrote about events in 1931 which weren't documented by other researchers for years.

Christo Matanov and Alexander Nikolov, two lecturer of Sofia University, Turkey called attention to the Genocide of the Balkans, during which the Osman Empire extended their activity from the Middle-East to the Balkans. Researchers focus on identifying the reason behind the great loss. Tax papers dated in the term in question suggest that genocide could pose as the causa for the mass of deaths, but at the same time post-war circumstances may have evoked an all-out plague infestation.

During the same section Hajnalka Márkusné Vörös from the Hungarian National Archives in Veszprém County presented the Roma genocide of Lake Grábler near Várpalota that took place in the first days of February 1945. The extent of the Hungarian atrocity against the Gypsies was later documented in the memorial of Hungarian people's tribunal. During the several months long movement of the front the Arrow Cross authorities have murdered 118 people, mostly women and children with the accusation of collaborating with the Soviet Army.

In the section dealing with the Holocaust, Endre Mózes from Israeli Haifa asked the question: what is the connection between Holocaust, genocide and Philo-Semitism? The lecturer has dedicated his past few years to Philo-Semitism and feels that the slightly disremembered expression should be filled with new content: the culture of coexistence. Mutual understanding is essential not solely about the horrors, but about friendship and cooperation as well. The most crucial aspect of the strategy against the forthcoming genocide threats may be the different people getting to know each other's nature, culture and history as much as possible, and then we can hope that friends will stand up and protect those who are attacked. Friendship needs to be nurtured professionally, in which the necessary cooperation must be institutionalized, thus silencing the words of hate and empowering the words of agreement.
Gábor Gyáni, lecturer of ELTE University has discussed Jewish identity, the perception of Jewish by other nations and the changing correlation between the two during historical times with the title 'What does it mean to be Jewish?'.
Were those persecuted by the Jewish laws in the Horthy era, since the 1920's numerus clausus to the late thirties and early forties, truly Jews in their own identity and how much were they subjected to this definition? According to Professor Gyáni they considered themselves to be Hungarians, but the statute labeled them Jews on the basis of their religious denomination and the religious-denominational identity of their ancestors.
This process contradicted the results of assimilation in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century.

Wojciech Kozlowskí Polish researcher analyzed the ethnic and political means which were used by the Nazi political machine against the Polish State besides the Holocaust. How did they annihilate the Polish State? What were the direct or indirect means of the genocide policy of the National Socialist Germans? During the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland only the Hague Convention of 1989 regulated laws and customs of warfare. The Nazi acts however ignored the Convention and its morals – it wasn't country against county, armed forces against armed forces, but a war machine with the purpose of abolishing ethnic groups and forcefully changing the ethnic composition of the region.

Erzsébet D. Molnár, lecturer of the II. Ferenc Rákóczi Transcarpatian Hungarian Institute Described the greatest twentieth-century tragedy of Subcarpathian Hungarians. During the fall of 1944 when the Soviet army captured it, the region came under heavy Soviet reorganization even though it still belonged to Hungarian territory. The most tragic element of the series of measures was the deportation of Transcarpathian Hungarians. This was implemented on the basis of order 0036 of the 4th Ukrainian Front (12 November 1944) which called for seizing the Hungarian and German population aged between 18 and 55 in the region, and their deportation to prison camps. Nearly 30.000 Hungarian and German people were taken away during November and December of 1944, and one third of them have never returned. According to Erzsébet D. Molnár the process could be considered genocide, since it focused on an ethnic group of people and its purpose was the annihilation or dismemberment of the community in the region.

Zalán Bognár, professor of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary covered the fate of the Hungarian civilians deported to the Soviet Union.
From Hungary, which bore the population of 14,7 million people and the size of 172 square kilometers at that time, about 300,000 civilians were deported to forced labor camps in the Soviet Union without trial. The main reasons behind the deportations were the dire need for mass slave labor and retaliation against the enemy, while the ideological basis was the principle of collective guilt. About 40 percent of the deportees died, 25 percent even without leaving the Carpathian Basin.

Maciej Szymanowski, professor of PPCU, who talked about the genocide against the nearly hundred thousand ethnic Poles in Volhynia, East Galicia, has pointed out what impact the crimes of the Second World War and Post-War period have had on our lives, even today, from Budapest to Warsaw, to Prague to Transcarpathia, influencing the whole region.