Red Prison: a place for remembrance

“The freedom we have achieved was not free”

Walking into the Red Prison in Suleimaniya city enlightens visitors of the cruelty of Saddam Hussein and his plan to wipe out the Kurdish nation.

Inside Red Prison Museum, a Kurdish film crew is shooting a well-known and important Kurdish drama series called “Gardalul” (Whirlwind). Some of the actors are dressed in security uniforms from Saddam Hussein’s time; others are dressed in traditional Kurdish uniform. Those in security uniforms are torturing those dressed in traditional uniforms, using various types of torture adapted from other countries.

“Gardalul” is based on Saddam’s oppression of Kurds. He had people randomly killed and arrested. He destroyed Kurdish villages, made people disappear, and allowed the rape of women in prison. Kurds have seen two seasons of “Gardalul,” and impatiently await the third and possibly final season. “The aim of making this drama is to show the new generations Saddam’s cruelty so that they will never forget,” said Jalil Zangana, director of the series.

One of the most important locations in “Gardalul” is the Red Prison, or the “Amna Suraca” in Kurdish. Construction of the Red Prison began in 1979, the design of the building made from East of Germany. The Iraqi government initially falsely claimed that the building was for an agricultural college. The people of Suleimaniya bought the rumour until 1984, when the building was completed and taken by Iraqi security forces. Suleimaniya residents coined the term Red Prison, but Ako Gharib, director of the Red Prison Museum said it is a mistake to call it that, as it was much more. “It was the Baath Party’s headquarters in Suleimaniya province, [built to] wipe out the Kurdish nation,” said Gharib. He was a guerrilla for 23 years, and he spent that time fighting the Iraqi government.

Gharib said the compound consisted of several departments. The Security Department for Economy worked to destroy the infrastructure in the province. The Political Department was meant to destroy the Kurdish revolution, and the Culture Department was built to eradicate Kurdish culture. Moreover, inside the compound was a prison or--it is better to say--a department to torture people and coerce them to falsely confess. Those detainees were sent to prisons in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

The torture department was comprised of three sections: men’s, women’s, and children’s. “Thousands and thousands were tortured and then sent to prisons in Iraqi cities. And then they despaired forever,” said Gharib. In the early 1980s, the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein initiated the Anfal Campaign to wipe out the Kurdish nation. Kurds claim that in the campaign more than 182,000 people were arrested and disappeared forever, and more than 4,000 villages were destroyed. After 2003, the remains of some of the missing were found in mass graves in southern and middle Iraq.

Gharib noted that these compounds were built in the Kurdish provinces to conduct the Anfal Campaign. There were similar Iraqi regime security compounds in Erbil, Duhok, and Kirkuk provinces. The day of the Kurdish Uprising against Hussein’s government in 1991, these compounds came under attack by Kurdish people and fighters. The security compounds in Erbil and Duhok were flattened, and the Suleimaniya security compound is the only one that still exists—although now as a museum.
After the uprising, the prominent Kurdish female politician and Iraqi First Lady, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, decided to preserve the Red Prison so that it would remain part of Kurdish history. And only recently did she turn it into a museum. Parts of the premises of the Red Prison have been untouched and remain as it did the day after the uprising. Bullet holes pock the walls. Only in one building is there no sign of bullet, and that would be in the torture department building.


“People and Kurdish fighters knew that there were prisoners inside the building; that’s why they did not attack it,” said one of the Red Prison employees who works as a guide.

The museum is classified into several sections. The torture section shows how security members of Saddam Hussein’s regime tortured people. The culture section exhibits Kurdish culture, and a weapons section shows different kinds of weapons used in the history of Iraq to wipe out the Kurdish existence. A cinema shows documents about the Anfal Campaign and Kurdish Genocide. Gharib said there is a plan to open another department to collect and preserve documents related to Anfal.

The Red Prison attracts both local and foreign visitors. “I am here so that I don’t forget the brutality of the Iraqi regime, and to remember that the freedom we have achieved was not free,” said Abdullah Ali, visiting the Red Prison with his wife.

Kurdish students in Tikrit for their lives

Studying in Tikrit like “going to a war zone,” says one student

Kurdish students in other parts of Iraq demand a return to universities in Kurdistan Region.

Three weeks after Kurdish student Bayar Tahir Ismail was accepted into the College of Engineering at Tikrit University in Tikrit city in northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded 300 meters away from his classroom. “I was sitting in my classroom, and suddenly I heard an explosion that shook the classroom. I told myself I have made the wrong decision to study here,” said 29-year-old Ismail.

In 2008, the Kurdistan Region and Baghdad ministries of Higher Education signed a coordination agreement that every year a number of students in Kurdistan Region can study medicine and engineering in universities in middle and southern Iraq. The agreement came after a number of high school graduates in Kurdistan Region earned grades above 90 percent; but they were not accepted in the medicine and engineering colleges in Kurdistan since these colleges were already filled with students who had better grades.

Ismail was accepted into the College of Education in Erbil city in 2008, but because he had good grades and his desire was to study engineering, he decided to go to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home city, to study. He finished his first year at Tikrit University, but instead of talking about engineering and his studies, he reflected only on the suffering he has endured in the past year.

“We [Kurdish and Arab students] live in a very dirty and old dormitory provided by Tikrit University. We drink water from the Tigris River, which is contaminated,” he said. “But still, my main concern is security. I go to market once a week because insurgents target crowded places.”

Speaking about his first year, he continued: “I was sitting in my dormitory studying for the final, and a car bomb targeting a police station exploded near my dormitory. Just imagine trying to study in this situation.” Ismail said lack of freedom also makes him want to return to the Region to study. He told about New Year’s Eve, when they wanted to dance and celebrate. When they took to the dormitory balcony for celebrations, dormitory guards shot around 15 bullets on the air, warning them not to celebrate or make any noise.

Currently for about eight days now, some 35 Kurdish students studying in other parts of Iraq have been demonstrating and striking in front of the Kurdistan Region Ministry of Higher Education and Oarliament, seeking return to regional universities.

“It is dangerous and risky for us to study in the universities in other parts of Iraq,” said Yassin Abdullah, student representative. Abdullah said a Kurdish student from Halabja city studying in Anbar University near Baghdad was kidnapped last year and later released after his family paid US$30,000 in ransom. Abdullah studies as Mosul University; he is under a lot of pressure from his parents to return.

The Kurdistan Ministry of Higher Education told students that it does not have the ability to incorporate them into Kurdistan Region universities since the universities are overcrowded. Moreover, the ministry remarked that these students signed conformity with the ministry, promising not to ask to be returned to Kurdistan Region universities.

The students admit the agreement. “We admit that there is an agreement between us and the ministry; we promised not to ask to be returned to the universities in Kurdistan Region. But we did not know our lives would be in danger by studying in other Iraqi cities.”

Omer Nuradini, member of Kurdistan Parliament of Higher Education Committee, told “The Kurdish Globe” that Parliament is working hard to solve the problem. “…Our committee sat down with the ministry more than five times to solve the issue. However I don’t think the ministry is able to solve it because its universities are overcrowded with students,” said Nuradini.

He added that this year high school graduates who want to attend government universities and institutes also will not be able to be incorporated. Their only options are to study in private universities in the region or in universities in other Iraqi cities.

Private universities take on more importance to the region as government universities become unable to accept all graduating high school students. Currently, there are nine private universities in Kurdistan Region; all of them have opened in the past three years and, according to the Ministry of Higher Education in the region, next year two more private universities will open.

Last year, 33,000 students graduated from high school. But the government university was only able to accept 25,000 students, said Dr. Abdul Gahar. "Now, 7,000 students are studying in private universities in the region." Ismail said if the ministry does not bring him back to the universities in Kurdistan Region, he will not continue studying. “If Tikrit were safe I would love to study there; you learn good engineering science as well as Arabic language. But going there is like going to a war zone--you feel you will get killed any minute.”