Cartoonists Under Threat

Leslie Chew is one of the best known Singaporean cartoonists, with over 27,400 Facebook followers of his controversial “Demon-cratic Singapore” cartoon strip.
According to an August 6 article in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Chew has been under police investigation since April for potential wrongdoing in several cartoons he drew for his Facebook comic strip, which he describes as a “totally fictional comic.” Police arrested Mr. Chew on April 19 and questioned him over alleged sedition after a citizen filed a police complaint against the cartoonist for certain comic strips that the person said were racially insensitive. These were not … [full story]

Further to our continuing stories about missing Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan, it was reported by a reliable source that Mr. Raslan’s trial for sedition due to begin on June 3, 2013 has been indefinitely postponed.

Cartoonists Rights Network International will continue to monitor Mr. Raslan’s situation closely, and once again calls on the Syrian government to drop all charges against Mr. Raslan, and release him immediately to his family.

On June 5th the English language Sri Lanka Mirror, published in Colombo, Sri Lanka, reported that a member of Parliament, Arundhika Fernando, claimed to have met with missing journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda on a recent trip to France.
Prageeth, an employee of the Lanka-e-News website, disappeared in Colombo on his way home from work two days before the 2010 presidential elections, on the night of January 24th, 2010. He had been a vocal and public critic of the human rights abuses of the government of Pres. Mahinda Rajapaksa. Since his disappearance, his wife Sandya Eknaligoda has kept … [full story]