Qualla: Zia Memorial Museum

Zia Memorial Museum: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Owais Al Qarni, CC BY-SA 4.0. The building at Chittagong's Old Circuit House has been many things since the British Raj erected it in 1913: a residence for government officials, a radio broadcasting studio, a military base, a torture chamber, and finally the room where a president was murdered. That this single structure could hold so many chapters of South Asian history -- colonial administration, partition, liberation war, national independence, political assassination -- says something about both the building's durability and Bangladesh's turbulent first century. Today it is called the Zia Memorial Museum, though even that name is contested, and the museum itself has been closed for years, its walls crumbling for lack of government funds.

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Image: Owais Al Qarni | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zia Memorial Museum: A Building That Outlived Its Purpose

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Azim Al Jabber, CC BY-SA 3.0. The British built circuit houses across the subcontinent as way stations for traveling officials -- functional, respectable buildings that announced colonial authority without overstating it. Chittagong's Circuit House served that role from 1913 through the end of the Raj. After ...

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Image: Azim Al Jabber | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zia Memorial Museum: The Rooms That Became Cells

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rifat.jm223, CC BY-SA 4.0. During the 1971 Liberation War, the Pakistan Army converted Chittagong Circuit House into a military base. Several rooms became torture cells where Bengali civilians and suspected freedom fighters were subjected to electric shocks and worse. Women were raped inside the building; ...

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Image: Rifat.jm223 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zia Memorial Museum: The Night of 30 May

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Croes, Rob C. / Anefo, CC0. A decade later, the Circuit House became the site of another violent turning point. On 29 May 1981, President Ziaur Rahman -- founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the country's seventh president -- arrived at the building to mediate a dispute among local BNP leaders. T...

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Image: Croes, Rob C. / Anefo | CC0

Zia Memorial Museum: A Museum in Limbo

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Owais Al Qarni, CC BY-SA 4.0. Four days after the assassination, the government of Acting President Abdus Sattar approved converting the building into a museum. The Zia Memorial Museum was inaugurated on 6 September 1993, during Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's first term. Seventeen galleries displayed Ziaur Rahm...

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Image: Owais Al Qarni | CC BY-SA 4.0