In the city Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq you can find the Amna Suraka Museum. Another name for it is the red prison. A different kind of museum, is it worth visiting?
What is it?
It is a museum, which was used under the control of Saddam Hussain. Mainly in the 80s, it was a place where mainly Kurdish people were send to, to get tortured badly and also killed.
When the kurdish military forces were fighting back and capturing the headquarter/prison, where they were killing many of the security men from that place. Even the citizens were joining it, as a form of revenge.
Now it is a museum, to remind of what was happening in the prison back then.
What do you need to know, before going?
It is easy to reach, not far away from the center. It is for free. You will see things, which you usually will not see. They are not hiding the brutality and are not talking about anything positive, it is the reality you will see in the photos. With the sculptures and walking through the prison. They want you to feel something and think about what happened.
What to expect when visiting?
When visiting this museum in 2019, it was for free. It is a place where they want you to not just see everything, they want you to know what they’ve been through.
You can see pictures of victims, laying corpses and suffering in the eyes of the people. It is something which kurdish people in general had to go through, same as other people groups as well.
Some military vehicles such as tanks or artillery, are found in the open space of the museum. Besides that, the craziest thing you can see is the hall of mirrors. In this quite big room, you are able to find mirror pieces, which are on the walls. In total, there are 182.000, each of them is standing for a killed Kurd from the genocide on Kurdish people in 1988.
The goal of the genocide was to kill the rebel groups, which were fighting against the regime of Iraq. By researching this topic a little bit, most sources are telling that it can’t be more than 100.000. Doesn’t matter which number it is at the end, the number is high. Killings and in this case a genocide are something, which shouldn’t happen.
How was the experience?
For me personally it was really interesting, in Germany we were not learning about this. It was also for me the first time seeing a museum built up like this. You see everywhere suffering and dead people and also hanging sculptures.
It is basically just the reality shown there, so it is possible to think, what it must have been, being in jail there, or living at this time. The room with the mirrors is really creative, it is basically not a number anymore, you are really feeling the number. Because it is a huge number, due to this fact also a huge amount of mirror pieces.
My favorite by far were the military vehicles, it is because I find that in general really interesting. In Germany, you are not able to find this kind of stuff very often.
Many school classes were visiting this museum as well, which felt for me similar to the mandatory concentration camp visits in Germany, which are really important! It is there, so that people know how bad it was, so that it is not happening again.
Easy spending a longer time there, when really going for it and trying to visit everything there. It is really interesting there and a lot to see.
Summary
It is a different museum from what you usually will know already. It is a different way for illustrating suffering of people and a genocide. Maybe you will be sad after visiting, maybe it will not have this effect.
It is interesting to visit, when you are already in this city. Also interesting is that this museum is one of the biggest sights of this city, which usually other things are.
I can recommend you to go there. In general the Kurdish area in northern Iraq is something that should be thinking of, for a future trip. Also to Jordan & Saudi-Arabia.
I would love to hear your experiences about this place, or questions. Share it with me in the comments.
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