Amna Sur / Amna Suraka is a former Baath regime prison - now museum - located in the city of #Slemani in #Kurdistan. In the secret prison the Baath regime interrogated, tortured, raped and killed #Kurdish prisoners on a daily basis. The buildings themselves are littered with bullet holes and grenade damage. These mark the battles during the 1991 uprising - Raparîn - when local Kurds took control of the prison. Old tanks from the Iraqi military line one wall of the courtyard. The buildings have not been restored, remaining as a museum memorialising the cruelty of Saddams regime. There is no official museum text to welcome you; the prison is left exactly as it was 20 years ago. 

“We walked through rooms where women experienced torture and rape. The bedding and plates had been left exactly as they were when the captives were set free.”  The artist was confronted with solitary confinement cells where prisoners wrote or scratched messages or poems into the walls. “The cells seemed too small to stand up or lie down in, its then that I realised that the place was designed for evil.” - Ben Hodson.