We are deeply shocked and saddened by the death of writer, activist and film director Lokman Slim.
Lokman had gone missing Wednesday evening in South of Lebanon and was found murdered in his car this Thursday morning. A friend and partner of the Heinrich Böll Foundation for many years, Lokman Slim and his wife Monika Borgmann founded and managed the Umam Research and Documentation Center in Ghobeiry, a southern suburb of Beirut where exhibitions, discussions and installations took place in its hangar. Their work dealt with the trauma of survivors of political violence, state arbitrariness and torture in both Lebanon and Syria. In 2018 and 2019, the Heinrich Böll Foundation showed Lokman and Monika's film Tadmor about the systematic torture and humiliation in Syrian prisons, in which former political prisoners from Lebanon had re-enacted their horrific everyday life in Syrian custody. Lokman was one of the staunchest independent critics of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime, and despite the numerous threats he and Monika received, he continued to be an important, eloquent, provocative and argumentative commentator during political discussions. With this news, Lebanon has lost a courageous and outspoken fighter of injustice and political censorship.