RNA - "I should thank General Qassem Soleimeni and other military forces who are present in Syria at the demand of the country's government to establish security. They could keep away the Syrian Armenians and Assyrians in many conditions from massacre and serious harms," Khanlari on Monday.
He added that the Armenians mostly live in Aleppo region in Syria which was occupied by the ISIL and al-Nusra Front (Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at or the Levant Liberation Board) and they were under high pressures and many of them were killed by the terrorists, noting that in several cases, the Iranian military advisors in Syria have saved them from the danger of death posed by the terrorists.
In relevant remarks in 2015, Representative of Iranian Assyrians at the Parliament Yonatan Betkolia blasted the western countries for keeping mum about the calamities imposed by the terrorists on religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.
"The West's silence about the tragic conditions created for the religious minorities of Iraq and Syria is a selective approach to human rights issues," Betkelia said in a meeting with Vice-President of the German Parliament Claudia Roth in Tehran.
Betkelia reiterated that using human rights as a political tool has resulted in double-standards towards tragedies against minorities of Iraq and Syria.
He, meantime, pointed to the conditions of religious minorities in Iran, and said, "Religious minorities enjoy freedom and equal rights with other Iranians in this country."
Source: Fars News Agancy
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