Sylvestre Bisimwa is a lawyer from Bukavu, eastern DR Congo. As a specialist in human rights and international criminal law, he works at the International Criminal Court and other forums. In Congo he represented women who had been raped by government soldiers. In 2015 he took part in Milo Raus’ Congo Tribunal in Berlin and Bukavu.
Beatriz Brinkmann was born in Chile to German parents. In the 1980s she was arrested in Chile for political reasons, but was able to leave for Germany. Today she works at the Center for Mental Health and Human Rights (CINTRAS), an organisation providing psycho-social support for victims of the Dictatorship in Chile.
Reed Brody, US attorney, worked for many years for Human Rights Watch. He represented victims of the Chilean and Haitian dictatorships and uncovered atrocities in Nicaragua by the US-backed Contras. Most recently, Brody played a significant role in the successful trial of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré.
Anwar al-Bunni (born 1959) is a Syrian lawyer who defended human rights activists and the politically persecuted. In 2006 he was sentenced to five years in prison because of his work. During those years, he was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Human Rights Award of the German Judges Association. Al-Bunni now lives in Berlin.
Estela de Carlotto, president of the association of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. For many years she searched for her daughter Laura Estela, who the military had “disappear” in 1977. In 2014 she found her grandson, who had been born while her daughter was in prison. In 2003, she was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.
Omar D. is an optometrist from Algeria. At the age of 20 he took an interest in photography and since 1998 has regularly had his work exhibited. He is considered a chronicler of a harrowing Algerian history, seeking to uncover the injustices of the past.
Silvina Der-Meguerditchian was born in Argentina as the daughter of Armenian immigrants. As an artist, she explores issues such as belonging and the role of minorities in society. At the Venice Biennale in 2015, she was involved in the Armenian pavilion which went on to win the Golden Lion. She lives in Berlin.
Andreas Fanizadeh studied politics and literature and worked at the ID published house, which specialized in “the politics of the militant left after 1968” and which he opened up to include debates in the field of art and pop culture. Since October 2007 he has been responsible for the arts section of the taz newspaper.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is an agency for progressive architecture and media research based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Its work includes compiling court evidence in the form of interactive maps, films and animations. FA recently published a project on the Saydnaya prison in Syria together with Amnesty International.
Juan Garcés is a Spanish lawyer. He worked from 1970 to 1973 as a consultant to Chilean President Salvador Allende. For his efforts to press charges against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in Spain, Garcés was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1999. Charges were subsequently filed against Pinochet in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Argentina.
Martin Glasenapp coordinated the Middle Eastern and Syrian work for the socio-medical aid organisation medico international for over ten years. For over 15 years he has been travelling regularly to Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Turkey. In May 2016, he became head of office for Katja Kipping, Chairperson of the DIE LINKE party.
Erich Hackl is a writer, editor and translator from Austria. His stories, which have been translated into 25 different languages, are based on real events and inspired, among other things, by his extensive travels in Latin America. He is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt.
Scott Horton is a US attorney, journalist, adjunct professor at Columbia University and co-editor of Harper’s magazine. Horton specializes in international public and private law, the law of armed conflict and human rights. Horton has received numerous awards for his writing on these issues.
Wolfgang Kaleck, German lawyer, author and General Secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. His latest publications are: Mit Recht gegen die Macht (2015) und Unternehmen vor Gericht (2016, with Miriam Saage-Maaß).
Alexandra Lily Kather, former trainee at ECCHR and PhD Candidate in international law at Middlesex University London where she researches the legal protection of mass graves. Her previous research, conducted in the Netherlands and Bosnia, was concerned with the responsibility of the Dutch peacekeeping forces regarding the genocide of Bosnian-Muslim refugees in Srebrenica as well as the protection of crimes of sexual violence in international criminal law.
Patrick Kroker, German lawyer. He has worked at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the University of Hamburg and the Hertie School of Governance. He wrote his PhD on victim participation in international criminal proceedings and now works at the ECCHR on international crimes and accountability.
Gila Lustiger, author. In her novels Inventory (2001) and So sind wir (2005) she also examines the fates of Jews in Germany. In 2016 she published her award-winning essay Erschütterung on the causes and impact of the terror attacks in France. She lives in Paris.
Jeanine Meerapfel is a film director, screenwriter and producer. She won numerous awards for documentaries and feature films such as Die Kümmeltürkin geht and La Amiga and was professor at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. Her film The German Friend was released in 2012. Since 2015, she has been president of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Sara Méndez, political activist in Urguguay, was kidnapped along with her newborn son in Argentinian exile in 1976 as part of Operation Condor. She was imprisoned for five years and did not see her son for 26 years. She continues to fight against impunity for dictatorship crimes.
Eduardo Molinari, artist and art professor from Argentina. Since 2010 he has co-directed with Azul Blaseotto the project space La Dársena, a platform for collective experiments and research. He exhibits his work internationally, taking part, for example, in the “The Potosí Principle” exhibition in 2011 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
Jasmina Musić moved from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Germany with her family when she was a child. She studied acting in Hamburg and Tuzla and is member of the ensemble at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. Currently she is working as a guest on the production Common Ground by Yael Ronen at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
Orit Nahmias, actress from Israel. After studying in Tel Aviv she participated in various theater productions in Israel as well as at the Berliner Schaubühne. She is an ensemble member at the Maxim Gorki Theater, where she worked on the play Common Ground.
Nghia Nuyen fled from Vietnam to Germany with his family at the end of the Vietnam War and later studied painting in Munich. The central theme of his work is the serial portrait. In his drawings, installations and performances he explores biographical themes and the construction of identity.
Milo Rau, theatre and film director, journalist, essayist and lecturer. He studied sociology, German and Romance studies in Paris, Zurich, and Berlin. His productions (The Last Days of the Ceausescus, The Congo Tribunal, etc.) have been awarded prizes at numerous major national and international festivals.
Knut Rauchfuss, physician and journalist from Germany, was reponsible for the “Justice Heals” campaign from the Society for Medical Aid for Refugees in Bochum. His book Kein Vergeben. Kein Vergessen (2009) (No Forgiving. No Forgetting) documents the experiences of survivors and activists from twelve countries in the efforts to address dictatorship crimes.
Kathrin Röggla, author. Since 1990, she has been writing prose as well as plays for radio and theatre. In 2012, she became a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and was elected Vice-President in 2015. She was awarded the poetry lectureship in drama at the University of Saarland. She lives in Berlin.
Rüdger Rossig, German journalist, read Balkan studies and sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. From 1995 to 1998, he worked at the UN and the Organisation for Securtiy and Cooperation in Zagreb and Sarajevo. He is an author and editor at the daily taz newspaper and publishes in various German and international media.
Fabiana Rouseaux is a psychologist and writer from Argentina. She is director of the Center for Supporting Victims of Human Rights Violations at the Argentinian Ministry of Human Rights which offers psychological assistance to victims of state terrorism.
Beate Rudolf, German lawyer specialized in human rights. She taught international law, European law and German constitutional law at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf and at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2010 she was appointed the director of the German Institute for Human Rights.
Mark Sealy is a British curator and cultural historian with a special interest in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics and human rights. In 1991, he became the director of Autograph ABP, the Association of Black Photographers. He curated the 2015 photo exhibition Human Rights Human Wrongs in London.
Peter Seibert, German historian and art historian. Since 1991 he has taught the social history of literature at the Gesamthochschule Siegen and from 2001 to 2013 literature and media at the University of Kassel. His research interests include literature and media, literary exhibitions and the literature of exile.
Ronen Steinke studied law and criminology in Hamburg and Tokyo and wrote his PhD on war crimes tribunals from 1945 to the present day. He has worked as an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung since 2011. In 2012/2013 he was a guest researcher at the Fritz Bauer Institute of the History and Impact of the Holocaust located in Frankfurt am Main.
Karina Theurer, feminist lawyer, translator and co-editor of alba.lateinamerik, heads an interdisciplinary programme on antidiscrimination at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She publishes on the (in)visibility of sexualized violence against women in literary and legal texts.
Claire Tixiere, French lawyer. After her studies she worked for the Center for Constituional Rights (CCR) in New York. She also represented the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) at the United Nations. Today she heads the Education Program at ECCHR in Berlin.
Ilija Trojanow, author, translator and publisher. His family fled to Germany in 1971 and later moved to Kenya. In his first novel Die Welt ist groß und Rettung lauert überall(1996) he addresses his family’s experience as political refugees and asylum seekers. He lives in Vienna.
Najem Wali, author and freelance journalist, studied German literature at the University of Baghdad. In 1980 he deserted from his military service in Iraq and fled to West Germany. His latest worksinclude Bagdad Marlboro (2014) and Bagdad. Erinnerungen an eine Weltstadt (2015). He lives in Berlin.
Thomas Walther, German jurist. A judge and prosecutor since 1975, he worked at the central office for the investigation of Nazi crimes from 2006, making a significant contribution to the proceedings against Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. He now represents Holocaust survivors in legal proceedings in Germany.
Peter Weiss, US lawyer. In 1941, he fled to the USA from occupied Austria. His work as a lawyer focuses on the fight against atomic weapons as well as the prevention of torture. He was founder and president of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Weapons (IALANA) and long-standing vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.
Gerhard Werle, German legal scholar. Since 1993 he has held the chair for German and international criminal law, criminal procedure and legal history at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He has been the director of the South African-German Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice since 2008.
Rosa Yassin Hassan, Syrian author. After her studies in architecture, she began writing short stories and novels in the 1990s. She was also active in the Syrian women’s movement and since 2011 has reported on everyday life in Syria in her blog “Diary of the Syrian Revolution”. She lives in Hamburg.