Counter-Forums and Peoples's Tribunals

A two-part evening devoted to peoples' tribunals and other grassroots initiatives acting as a 'theatre of justice and truth': assemblies staged to claim authority over justice and to counter the legal violence exercised by the state and its apparatuses. It concerns alternative models of justice operating beyond official legal frameworks, distinguished by their performative and embodied dimension. Başak Ertür, a critical legal scholar, lecturer at the Centre for Research Architecture and Research Fellow at Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, gives a talk titled „Volksprozesse als Gegenforen“. Afterwards the event screens the film „hold on to her“ (2024, 80 minutes) directed by Robin Vanbesien, which addresses a current case of police and state violence connected to migration and border controls in Belgium: in 2018, Mawda Shawri was shot by a Belgian police officer during a chase on a major motorway, and the film traces a lived social infrastructure of care, solidarity and the struggle for justice.