Award Winner Updates

On November 1, Malaysian cartoonist Zunar, recipient of CRNI’s 2011 Award for Courage In Editorial Cartooning, received the decision of the Appeals Court of Malaysia concerning his challenge to an earlier ruling that had upheld his 2010 arrest on charges of sedition, and the seizure of his book “Cartoon-O-Phobia”.  Justices Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim, Mohd Arif Md Yusof and David Wong unanimously upheld the arrest and detention, as well as the earlier court’s decision that the seizure of Zunar’s books in 2010 was unlawful.
The arrest and seizure had and continue to have … [full story]

Since our most recent posting there have been reports that Akram Raslan is alive, others claiming otherwise. While we hope it is the former, his current status remains unclear. CRNI is working every day with a number of sources to verify that he is alive and relatively well.
Akram Raslan was CRNI’s 2013 winner of the Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning. Past award winners have hailed from Malaysia, South Africa, Turkey, Palestine, Iran, and India, including last year’s winner, Ali Ferzat, also from Syria. [full story]

Assem Trivedi was chosen as the co-recipient of our 2012 CIEC award for two courageous actions. First, in an atmosphere of increasing censorship and repression in the world’s largest democracy, Mr. Trivedi launched Cartoons Against Corruption to mobilize his fellow citizens against India’s pervasive political corruption.
Then, after being charged with treason and insulting national symbols, Aseem took his second courageous action. Despite the charges and threats of additional charges, he assumed a leadership role in India’s emerging free speech movement. Joining forces with other free speech activists, Aseem launched an online freedom of expression campaign called Save Your Voice: A Movement Against Web Censorship.