Sorya, Iraq -- The modern history of the Assyrians is overshadowed by massacres and genocides. After the Turkish Genocide of 1915 and the Simmele Massacre, the Assyrian people were subjected to another massacre on 16 September 1969, in the remote village of Sorya, in the Zakho district of Nohadra (Duhok) Governorate, in what is now the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Committed during the era of the Baath regime under President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the Sorya Massacre resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of the village's Assyrian inhabitants.

An Iraqi army unit led by the Lieutenant Abdul Karim al-Juhaishi launched a barbaric attack on the village. The pretext was that its residents had detonated a landmine against a convoy he was leading four kilometers away. The soldiers gathered the villagers in an animal pen and opened fire on them, killing 38 people.

Among the victims were the village priest Father Hanna Qasha and village mayor Khammo Marawge, as well as his daughter. Approximately 25 others were seriously injured. The bodies of the martyrs were left scattered in the streets and squares of the village, a scene illustrating the utter brutality of the Baath regime and its military leaders.

The stated goal of the attack was to punish the villagers for an act they did not commit. However, the unstated primary unstated objective was the complete eradication of the village's 40 Assyrian families.

Fifty-seven years have passed, during which the country of Iraq has seen numerous successive governments that have claimed to be democratic. Yet, none have taken action to bring justice for the Assyrian people and the victims of the Sorya Massacre, choosing to remain silent.

For 57 years, demands by Assyrians in Iraq and in the diaspora for official recognition of the massacre have not ceased. Assyrians refuse to concede until they obtain official recognition and justice for their ancestors who were martyred in the massacre.