The Simele Massacre: 3,000-6,000 (mar 1, 1933 – sep 1, 1933)

Description:

The Simele Massacre was carried out by the Kingdom of Iraq (Iraqi Army under General Bakr Sidqi), along with Arab and Kurdish militias and irregular forces against the Assyrian population between August 7, 1933 and August 11, 1933 (main four-day killing period, though violence continued through August 1933), with an estimated death toll between 600 (Official British sources) and 6,000 (Assyrian sources and various historians).

The Iraqi forces and allied militias also engaged in mass executions by firing squads and machine guns, systematic targeting of Assyrian males, running over victims with armored cars, rape of women and girls (some forced to march naked before Iraqi commanders), bayoneting of pregnant women, murdering children (including flinging them in the air and piercing them on bayonets), burning victims alive with Bibles, village looting and destruction (over 63 Assyrian villages targeted in Dohuk and Mosul districts, over 120 villages destroyed or abandoned), forced displacement (6,200 Assyrians fled immediately to Syria, followed by 15,000 more refugees in subsequent years), forced conversion to Islam or death, systematic theft of livestock and property, and cultural destruction.

It has been labeled as genocide by Raphael Lemkin (the creator of the term "genocide", who cited the Simele Massacre as one of the defining examples when he coined the term in 1944 and presented his concept to the League of Nations in 1933), genocide scholars including Gregory H. Stanton (founder of Genocide Watch), Hannibal Travis, Anahit Khosroeva, the Assyrian Studies Association, various Assyrian advocacy organizations including the Assyrian Policy Institute, and numerous historians who recognize it as meeting the criteria for genocide.

Though formal international state recognition remains extremely limited with no countries having officially recognized it as genocide as of 2025.

Influence on Lemkin:

Raphael Lemkin became interested in laws against mass atrocities after learning about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire and then later the experience of Assyrians massacred in Iraq during the 1933 Simele massacre. Months after the Simele Massacre, Lemkin created the concept of "genocide".

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