Sunday, June 11, 2017
The persecution of cartoonists is a reality
On
World Press Freedom Day, the plights of three persecuted cartoonists deserve a
spotlight By Michael Cavna
An illustration of Zunar at a D.C. eatery in 2015.
(Michael Cavna/The Washington Post)
ON WORLD PRESS Freedom
Day, it is vital to remember that political cartoonists remain on the
front lines of the fight.
If you value media freedom,
you might pause to reflect on the plight of Musa Kart, who has been jailed in
Turkey since last Halloween. Kart’s battles with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip
Erdogan stretch back more than a decade, but events escalated from courtroom
wrangling to direct home raids last fall: Karr and 10 of his fellow
Cumhuriyet staffers were rounded up amid Erdogan’s larger crackdown that has
affected tens of thousands of Turkish citizens. Kart went uncharged until last
month; he now faces decades in prison on political allegations that rights
workers say are without merit.
Today is also an opportune
time to think of the young cartoonist who goes by the nom de plume Mr. Eaten
Fish. He is an Iranian refugee who has been jailed in Papua New Guinea’s Manus
Camp after seeking to escape political persecution, he says, by trying to enter
Australia.
“Manus Camp” by Eaten Fish. (Cartoon courtesy of CRNI)
We also think of the
continually targeted Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque — better
known as Zunar — who as of last fall has been banned from travel outside his
nation.
(Courtesy of Zunar)
“Cartoonists Rights Network
International is currently working with [those] two imprisoned cartoonists in
Turkey and Papua New Guinea, and the other [one] in Malaysia whose passport has
been seized, so in a sense he is imprisoned in his own country,” Robert
Russell, the executive director of Cartoonists Rights Network International,
tells The Post’s Comic Riffs.
“About four other cartoonists
languish in a third-party countries waiting for some kind of rescue from the
forces that have made them leave their homes,” continues Russell. “They live
lives of fear, hunger, insecurity and, like other journalists in their
situations, sleepless nights that constantly erode any sense of hope.”
Russell has worked for decades
on securing the rights and freedom of political artists the globe over, but he
finds the current era to be especially difficult.
“What seems most frustrating
to me,” he says, “is how impotent some of our best-designed institutions are
when they come up against the wall of a sovereign nation that has decided not
to observe those human rights that are not convenient to them.
“The case of our friend and
colleague incarcerated at the Papua New Guinea, Manus Island Detention Center —
Eaten Fish — is the perfect example of these forces,” Russell says. “We, along
with many other institutions and individuals — from the absolute grass roots
right up to UNHCR and the British, Australian and Canadian parliaments — have
not been able to find him safe passage to a welcoming country. Over the last
year or two progress has definitely been made, but the forces of xenophobia
seem to be powered by some ancient pool of dark energy worthy of any of Stan
Lee’s dark comic books.”
CRNI’s principles, he says,
are unbowed by such dark forces.
“In high school, our history
professor used to drum into our heads that a democracy that fails to protect
its minorities loses its right to rule,” Russell says. “Government with no
right to rule seems inevitably to trump the better of mankind’s institutions.”
As such, Russell says World
Press Freedom Day symbolizes the beacon of hope, and “all the strategies,
all the creative thinking, all the highest ideals that humankind can put to
work defending the cornerstone of all other rights: freedom of speech.”
And so, on this day, CRNI
renews its call to the governments of Australia, Malaysia and Turkey “to take
the higher road” and “recognize these lost souls in detention.”
Two years after Charlie, cartoonists are still
persecuted
CONDEMNING ABUSES / RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE / PROTECTING JOURNALISTS / JUDICIAL HARASSMENT / ECONOMIC PRESSURE / IMPUNITY / VIOLENCE / IMPRISONED / FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
© Joep Bertrams (Pays-Bas) - Cartooning for Peace
On the eve of the second anniversary of the Charlie
Hebdo massacre, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Cartooning for Peace and other
cartoonist associations pay tribute to all press cartoonists who defend media
freedom by means of their cartoons.
How you wield a pencil can still lead to violent
reprisals.Only too often, cartoonists pay a high price for their irony and
impertinence. The threats they receive are barometers of free speech, acting as
indicators of the state of democracy in times of trouble.
It is hard to say whether cartoonists are more exposed
since the attack that killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January
2015. But they continue to be subjected to political, religious and economic
pressure, to censorship, dismissal, death threats, judicial harassment,
violence and, in the worst cases, even murder. As a profession, they are
clearly threatened.
“Since the Charlie tragedy, many cartoonists have
lived under constant political, religious and economic pressure, and pressure
from non-state groups as well,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“Accusations of offending religion are too often used
as a tool of political censorship. It is essential to remember that
international law protects cartoonists because it safeguards the right to
express and disseminate opinions that may offend, shock or disturb.
Cartooning for Peace president Plantu (Jean
Plantureux) said: “Many cartoonists bear witness, in their battles and in the
harassment and threats they receive, to the importance they assign to their
efforts to raise awareness. Since the Charlie terrorist attacks, other tragic
events have confirmed that, more than ever, we need to pursue our fight for
freedom, one that is also waged with the pencil.
RSF, Cartooning for Peace and the other press
cartoonist associations have compiled the following profiles of cartoonists who
have been dismissed, arrested, imprisoned or threatened because of their
cartoons.
The chosen cartoonists are Zunar, who has been hounded
by the Malaysian authorities for years and is be tried at the end of January;
Tahar Djehiche, an Algerian cartoonist who was given a jail sentence for
insulting President Bouteflika; Musa Kart, the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet’s
well-known cartoonist, who is now in jail; and Rayma Suprani, who was fired
from the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal over her cartoons about the
government and now lives in exile in the United States.
Sometimes just reposting a cartoon can lead to
prosecution and imprisonment. This is what happened to Tunisian blogger Jabeur
Mejri, who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 2012 in
connection with his Facebook posts.
ZUNAR (Malaysia)
Zulkifli Anwar Ulhaque, the cartoonist better known as
Zunar, is a symbol of the fight for freedom of expression in Malaysia and the
government’s bugbear. Because of his cartoons denouncing the corruption in all
layers of Malaysian society, he has been subjected to various kinds of
persecution for nearly a decade including repeated detention, arrests of
assistants and supporters, a travel ban, the closure of his website, the
confiscation of his cartoons and a ban on his cartoon books. When the opening
of a Zunar exhibition was disrupted by his critics in November, the police
intervened, confiscated the cartoons and ended up taking him into custody. In
December, he was arrested again when he organized a sale of his books to
compensate for the financial loss resulting from the exhibition’s cancellation.
As a result, he is now being investigated as a threat to parliamentary
democracy. He is already facing up to 43 years in prison on nine counts of
violating the Sedition Act, which violates freedom of expression by making it
easy to prosecute journalists and cartoonists for supposedly “seditious” content.
The pretext for Zunar’s prosecution was nine tweets critical of the government.
His trial has been postponed twice in the past two years and is now due to
start on 24 January. Last year he received the Cartooning for Peace Prize for
his courage and determination.
© Zunar (Malaysia) - Cartooning for Peace
RAYMA (Venezuela)
Rayma Suprani is a Venezuela cartoonist who worked for
nearly 20 years for the Caracas-based daily El Universal. Her cartoons
criticized poverty, the lack of social justice and abuse of power under
President Hugo Chavez, and under his successors after Chavez died in office in
2013. She had often been subjected to threats and pressure but in September
2014 she went “too far” in one of her cartoons. It portrayed public healthcare
in Venezuela – which has been undermined by the crisis in the petrodollar economy
– as an electrocardiogram that began with Chavez’s well-known signature and
then flatlined. She was immediately fired by El Universal, which had just been
acquired by someone more sympathetic to the Chavista government. Deprived of
her source of income, she fled to the United States, where she continues to use
her pencil to fight for freedom of expression.
© Rayma (Venezuela) - Cartooning for Peace
MUSA KART (Turkey)
During the wave of arrests that followed last July’s
failed coup in Turkey, the police detained a dozen employees of the leading
opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet on 31 October. They included editor Murat
Sabuncu, the newspaper’s lawyer, and its well-known cartoonist, Musa Kart. The
head of the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said they were suspected of committing
crimes on behalf of the Gülen movement (which is accused by the government of
orchestrating the coup attempt). “For years I have tried to transcribe what we
live through in this country in the form of caricatures and today it seems that
I have entered one of them,” Kart said at the time. “What explanations will
they give to the rest of the world? I have been taken into police custody
because I drew cartoons!”
© Musa Kart (Turkey) - Cartooning for Peace
TAHAR DJEHICHE
(Algeria)
The Algerian cartoonist Tahar Djehiche posted a
cartoon on social networks in April 2015 showing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
being buried under the sand of In Salah, a Saharan region where the population
has been protesting against the use of fracking to produce shale gas. His aim
was to draw attention to the environmental dangers of shale gas production by
this means in Algeria, but he was charged with insulting the president and
“inciting a mob.” He was acquitted in May 2015, but was convicted on appeal the
following November and was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of
500,000 dinars. Many international organizations have condemned this absurd and
incomprehensible decision, especially as it is still not known who was
responsible for the appeal.
© Tahar Djehiche (Algeria) - Cartooning for Peace
JABEUR MEJRI (Tunisia)
A 29-year-old Tunisian blogger, Jabeur Mejri was
prosecuted in March 2012 for posting cartoons and satirical texts on social
networks at a time of continuing tension just over a year after President Ben
Ali’s removal, when anything to do with religion was extremely sensitive. The
cartoons, in particular, were deemed to have insulted Islam. He was sentenced
to seven and a half years in prison and a fine of 1,200 dinars on charges of
disrupting public order, causing wrong to others, and violating morality. He
was strongly defended by human rights groups, which regarded him as one of the
first prisoners of conscience since the fall of the Ben Ali regime. After two
years in prison, he was finally pardoned by President Moncef Marzouki and was
released in March 2014. He was arrested again the following month on a charge
of insulting an official. After a second pardon in October 2014, he left
Tunisia.
© Willis from Tunis (Tunisia) - Cartooning for Peace 
