AMNA
SURAKA
![](399px-Amna_Suraka_(Red_Security_Building)_in_Sulaymaniyah_03.jpg)
Amna
Suraka exterior. The tank is part of the museum display
Amna
Suraka (Kurdish: meaning "Red Security" or "Red
Prison") is a museum in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region of
Iraq.
Prison
:
From 1979 to 1991, during Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, Amna
Suraka was the northern headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's
intelligence agency. Many people were imprisoned there, especially
students, Kurdish nationalists, and other dissidents. Many were
tortured and raped. The prison was captured by Peshmerga forces
during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq; 800 Iraqi soldiers retreated
to the prison and all were killed by Kurdish forces. The building
has many bullet marks from that battle.
Museum
:
In 2003, a museum was opened at the site for documenting the human
rights abuses under Saddam's rule. The museum is free to attend,
open six days a week, and mostly funded by the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan, a political party, and has also received funding
from the Talabani family and the Qaiwan Group. The museum exhibits
include mannequins demonstrating how people were tortured in the
prison and a hall of broken mirrors with 182,000 shards commemorating
Kurds killed during the genocidal Anfal campaign, with 4,500 backlights
to represent the Kurdish villages destroyed during the campaign.
There is also another exhibition on Anfal, with pictures of exhumed
bodies and the names of prominent Kurds who were killed or disappeared.
A later exhibit is on Peshmerga fighters killed by ISIS.
At
the museum, the history of human rights abuses is used in a narrative
of Kurdish nationalism. According to Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah,
the museum attempts to "constitute the Kurds as a nation
and nation-state and to demarcate the boundaries of a Kurdish
national identity" by memorializing human rights abuses against
Kurds.
In
2013, Vice News reporter Orlando Crowcroft called Amna Suraka
"the world's most depressing museum", as well as the
biggest tourist attraction in Sulaimaniyya.
Museum
exhibits
![](640px-Amna_Sur_03.jpg)
Artillery
pieces on display outside
![](450px-200_peopel_was_here_in_a_prisone.jpg)
Reconstructed
prison cell
![](450px-prisonertorture.jpg)
Torturing
detainees with electricity and hanging
![](450pxtorturing_the_kurdish_prisoner_before_killing_them.jpg)
Torture
of a prisoner by falanga
![](576px-Amna_Sur_15.jpg)
Representation
of a female prisoner who was raped until she gave birth to a child
![](576px-mirror.jpg)
Hall
of mirrors
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amna_Suraka