AMNA SURAKA

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

Artillery pieces on display outside

Reconstructed prison cell

Torturing detainees with electricity and hanging

Torture of a prisoner by falanga

Representation of a female prisoner who was raped until she gave birth to a child

Hall of mirrors

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amna_Suraka