Zehra Doğan
Video 5:46 mn
Camera: Sanger Abdullah Kareem, Hazha Khalid Hassan
Sound: Azhwan Kerkuk
Editing: Sanger Abdullah Kareem
Venue: Amna Suraka Museum, Sulaymaniyah / Kurdistan
Year: 2021
1- Title given to Koranic teachers or more generally to teachers in Turkey
2- Turkish Hizbullah is not directly related to the Lebanese Shiite Hizbullah, although it is also an Islamist
organization. Hizbullah is listed by the United States and Turkey itself as a terrorist organization. It was originally a bloodthirsty Sunni Islamist movement with a Kurdish majority and ultra-radical.
3- Described in particular, in Sura 55, verse 56 as female beings who “have not been touched by men or jinns”, as having large black eyes, rounded breasts.
4- According to Islam, virgins in paradise, which will be the reward of good Muslims.
This performance took place in Southern Kurdistan, in Irak, one of the four parts of Kurdistan which was split and shared between Irak, Iran, Turkey and Syria by dominant States that met in Lausanne one hundred years ago.
The armored vehicle shown in the the video is one among the many such vehicles that killed thousands of Kurds under Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The venue in which the performance was held is a former torture center, now a memorial: the Amna Suraka Museum. Under Saddam, Amna Suraka (Red Prison) served as headquarters for the Northern wing of Mukhabarat, Irak’s secret intelligence organization. In the memory of the region’s Kurdish population, it is also “the house of tortures”.
Between 1986 and 1989, the Iraki State conducted Operation Anfal, a genocide against Kurds. Ordered by Saddam Hussein’s Iraki regime, it was conducted by Ali Hassan al-Majid, with the aim of annihilating the Kurdish population. Anfal used bombings, terrestrial attacks, chemical and gas weapons, destructions of homes, massive deportations, executions, tortures… The massacre in Halabja with its 5 000 killed with chemical weapons is one of the most cruel phases in the Anfal which globally caused a minimum of 50 000 and perhaps up to 100 000 systematic and premeditated assassinations of Kurdish civilians, according to the report by Human Rights Watch.
This venue in which thousands of Kurds were arrested, tortured and assassinated was liberated in 1991 during the Desert Shield Operation, the first phase in the Gulf War, following attacks led by the Peshmergas.
Henceforth, Amna Suraka has the status of war museum and memorial.
English translation by Lucie Bourges
Zehra Doğan 