The MENA Prison Forum (MPF), medico international, and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations (OSF), are pleased to invite you to the third event of the series “Understanding Prison: MENA Prison Forum in Berlin."

The event will take place at 19:00 on 3 April 2025 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU1) in Berlin.

For tickets, please click here.

Film Screening “Erased,_Ascent of the Invisible” (2018) by Ghassan Halawani / 76 min / Arabic with English Subtitles

Thirty-five years ago, I witnessed the kidnapping of a man I know. He has disappeared since. Ten years ago, I caught a glimpse of his face while walking in the street, but I wasn’t sure it was him. Parts of his face were torn off, but his features had remained unchanged since the incident. Yet something was different, as if he wasn’t the same man. Director Ghassan Halawani takes the viewer on a forensic paper chase, uncovering, layer by layer, the darkest chapters of Lebanese history on walls, in documents, and urban architecture.

Talk “Lebanon: 50 Years After…” / Dr. Makram Rabah in conversation with Bernhard Hillenkamp / English with simultaneous German translation

The talk will be an opportunity for critical reflection and discussion of the long-lasting and contemporary dynamics affecting Lebanon since the civil war, mainly the legacy and impact of enforced disappearance and imprisonment. The discussion session will also address the present moment, as 2025 marks the fifty-year anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, and both Lebanon and Syria find themselves in a moment of precarious hope for a more just future.

Dr. Makram Rabah is a lecturer of History at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University and is the author of “A Campus at War: Student Politics at the American University of Beirut 1967-1975” (2009) and “Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory” (2020). Rabah is also a regular contributor to a number of regional and international publications on Middle Eastern political affairs.

Bernhard Hillenkamp is a political scientist specializing in Lebanon. From 1998 to 2004, he worked as a research assistant and co-editor of Beiruter Blätter at the Orient Institute Beirut. He later served as Country Director of forumZFD in Beirut from 2015 to 2020, leading efforts to support local civil society actors engaged in nonviolent conflict transformation. Currently, he works as a consultant for NGOs operating in the Middle East and is the Germany coordinator for UMAM.

The MENA Prison Forum, an initiative of UMAM Documentation and Research (UMAM D&R), is dedicated to researching prison culture in the MENA region. It is an interdisciplinary international network that includes former prisoners, filmmakers, academics, and activists from various countries around the region. Together with medico international and HAU, the MPF is organizing a series of events in Berlin to promote critical and continual engagement on carceral conditions and dynamics in the MENA region.