IRAQ: Bethnahrain Patriotic Union commemorates Sorya Massacre, condemns Prime Minister for not mentioning massacres of Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian in speech

ANKAWA, Iraq — On the 51st anniversary of the Sorya Massacre of 1969, the Bethnahrain Patriotic Union (HBA) in Iraq issued a statement commemorating the massacre of all 38 inhabitants of the village of Sorya by Baathist’s.

On 16 September 1969, Baathist’s descended on the village, gathered the Syriac Chaldean civilians of the village into a barn, and murdered them with automatic rifle fire. No one, not even children, were spared.

In its statement, HBA also blamed Mustafa al-Kadhimi for not speaking about the many crimes and massacres that the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people had been subjected to.

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The people of Sorya village were killed by the butcher First Lieutenant Abdul Karim al-Juhaishi, an officer in the Iraqi Army. Thirty-eight of our innocent Syriac Chaldean people and the Kurds were martyred in that village. The army gathered them and, without exception, brutally gunned them down. Only four of them survived, two male kids who were outside the village and two female girls remained under the bodies of their mothers.

Al-Juhaishi ordered that the property of the poor houses be looted and then they were completely burned.

This is an act of terrorism committed against our Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people which indicates the perpetrators’ fear of the great Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people and their civilization. The Iraqi government at that time declared that the perpetrator officer was insane in order to save him from punishment and preserve the government’s reputation. So far, we have not seen any Iraqi government commemorate the blood of these martyrs or grant the rights of martyr’s families to their relatives. On the contrary, they are only denying the truth.

Today, as we denounce this painful tragedy, we also condemn Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi for his failure to mention the calamities and massacres suffered by the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people when he visited Nohadra and spoke of the injustice inflicted on Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, and Yezidis.

Every Iraqi politician must be familiar with the history of their people. Unfortunately, it is clear that either the Iraqi politicians and governments do not want our people’s massacres to appear, they do not know of these massacres, or do not care about the history of these great people. In both cases, it is a national deficiency and a denial of the existence of our Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people.

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