The Red Building in Suliamaniya, Iraq, is a legacy of Saddam Hussein's brutal state. It is shattered and dormant it is like an extinct volcano in the middle of the city, reminding everyone that hell once ruled here. This is where the Hussein regime took suspect citizens and held them for years to break their families. The people taken here were mostly family members of the Peshmerga fighting in the hills and held hostage to force others to comply, not because they were suspected of anything themselves. Over 7,000 people died in less than 10 years from torture and mistreatment alone here before the beatings stopped for good in 1991. That's about two a day killed here not through official execution, just excessive abuse...and this is only one relatively small city in Iraq. At the end of the Gulf War, the people of Suliamaniya captured the Red Building after three days of fighting, and turned the place into a museum so that the suffering here would be remembered. . . .
Many moving photos at the link. |