Preserving the dark memory of torture

Every country carries a thick book of sorrow-some hidden in secrecy, others etched on history as an eternal reminder to generations yet unborn. For Bangladesh, a country born out of the 1971 war of liberation and genocide, its heritage of suffering is inseparable from its struggle for freedom. Again and again, the government has bled under oppression. But of all the instruments of terror, none perhaps were as gruesome and as chilling as the Aynaghar-the so-called 'Houses of Torture Cell' that were created during Sheikh Hasina's sixteen years in office.

Installed in party and government buildings, these secret torture chambers were not intended to break bones but to shatter the human spirit. The mirrored walls transformed imprisonment into a hall of mirrors torture chamber, where prisoners were forced to confront infinity of reflections of their broken, degraded selves. Survival was rare; freedom rarer. And survivors carried with them scars so deep they became living monuments to trauma.

To recall Aynaghar is not to succumb to the darkness, but to prevent its recurrence. It is a call to hold fast to truth, to pursue justice, and to imbue a democratic conscience strong enough to repel tyranny in all its guises. Countries from around the world have turned sites of violence into sites of reflection. Bangladesh needs to do the same-for memory is freedom's most potent defence.

The very design of Aynaghar manifests a reflective integration of physical torture and psychological torment. Cell mirrors did not serve as decor, but as sinister tools. Detainees described the omnipresent reflection as suffocating-the detainees' compulsion to see their wounds, humiliation, and desperation from every angle. In this way, the regime itself employed self-portraiture as humiliation and divestment of dignity upon the victim.

Physical torture was no less systematic. Detainees explained that electric shock, waterboarding, brutal beating, sleep deprivation for days on end, and starvation were the norm. To maximise the pain, detainees' screams were habitually amplified, causing panic and helpless terror. Torture in Aynaghars was not random violence-it was systematic destruction of the human psyche.

Forced disappearances added further brutality. The repression was never arbitrary. Its victims were carefully selected, mostly from students, opposition activists, human rights defenders, and journalists. By victimising those targets, the regime assaulted civil society's opinion-makers and punished civic resistance. The Aynaghar thus became not just places of individual harassment but instruments for eliminating the presence of civil society. Those torture cells were not the creations of rogue agents but official instruments in a culture of surveillance, extrajudicial murder, and enforced silence.

WHY PRESERVATION MATTERS: Authoritarian orders are based on a deliberate act of forgetting. There are already some individuals who are sympathetic to the present regime and claim that "such sites never existed" or are exaggerated. Conservation of Aynaghar removes the denial and distortion of history. Material evidence, when incorporated into civic institutions, makes truth undeniable.

As the global legal system is taking into consideration the torture camps as evidence in crimes against humanity, such as Auschwitz, it is prima facie evidence against the Nazis. Aynaghar can be the Bangladesh hub of accountability-the domestic courts or an international court in the spirit of the International Criminal Court.

The future generation of citizens in Bangladesh must learn not only the history of liberation, but also the history of betrayal and retreat to dictatorship. Museums made of Aynaghars can play a part in school curricula so that children learn that democracy is not born-it is won and it must be fought for and defended.

Preservation also gives a degree of dignity back to survivors and families of the disappeared. Silence alienates, but memorials provide a site for mourning, solidarity, and healing.

LESSONS FROM THE WORLD: Converting sites of repression into sites of conscience is an international trend. Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland is big example. More than 1.1 million perished there. It is a museum and not only a victim memorial but an instructor to millions yearly, with the motto of "Never Again." Tuol Sleng (S-21) in Cambodia was the Khmer Rouge torture center; the walls still have pre-execution photographs of victims today. It is a direct experience between the tourist and history. At Robben Island in South Africa, the cell of Nelson Mandela is an international pilgrimage site and symbol of the persistence of justice against the violence of apartheid. Villa Grimaldi, the Pinochet regime's house of torture in Chile, has been transformed into a peace park where survivors themselves take visitors into the very rooms in which human beings were tortured. In Argentina ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada) was the epicenter of Argentina's "Dirty War," during which thousands were tortured and "disappeared," is now a "Space for Memory" and houses archives and testimonies.

These examples are attestation to the truth that nations will never have the ability to turn their backs on their pasts but will need to face it through preservation. The failure to have such reckoning, as in instances of nations where torture websites were destroyed, typically leads to cycles of authoritarian backsliding.

AYNAGHAR IN BANGLADESH: The long history of violence and repression leaves an indelible stain on South Asia. In Sri Lanka, the years of civil war are associated with the notorious 'White Vans; that disappeared journalists, critics, and human rights activists. Most of those abducted were never seen again, and their families lived their entire lives in perpetual pain and terror.

In Pakistan, the province of Balochistan is haunted by the specter of the 'missing persons.' Dozens of its own citizens, usually students and activists, have vanished into the night, and their fate is unknown. The unresolved drama continues to polarise Pakistan's democratic image.

There is a story of silence and militarisation in Kashmir, India. Secret detentions and routine reports of custodial killings have transformed the valley into a theatre of terror, where accountability is the exception and trauma the norm. Scars of repression are raw and continuing, producing cycles of suspicion and suffering.

Burmese prisons are themselves manifestations of military rule. University students, popularly elected leaders, and all manners of dissidents have been repeatedly imprisoned, tortured, and dehumanised, and yet this repressive form of governance still dominates.

Placing Bangladesh in this kind of regional perspective, Bangladesh has the option to be different. By converting the Aynaghars into museums, it can create a historic precedent in South Asia: that such resistance against atrocities through truth and accountability is the beginning of democracy. Not only will it help Bangladesh's own renaissance of democracy, but it will also act as an example for other societies in the region stalked by the specter of state violence.

CONCLUSION: The Aynaghars were built to silence, to destroy, and intimidate. If they fall or are emptied, their mission will be accomplished. But if they are preserved and converted into museums, they will do the precise opposite: they will speak, testify, and empower.

Dr Serajul I. Bhuiyan is a professor and former chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Savannah State University in Georgia in USA. sibhuiyan@yahoo.com