CARTOONISTS RIGHTS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL

Kofi Annan, 1938-2018

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Cartoonists across the globe have responded to the loss of the Ghanaian diplomat and former UN Secretary-General.

Kofi Annan caricature by Terry Anderson

With the death of Kofi Annan human rights organisations the world over have lost one of their most well-known and passionate advocates.

Cartoonists Rights Network International joins in the outpouring of grief that has ensued since August 18th and sends our condolences to colleagues who knew him best, especially Cartooning For Peace staff in France and Switzerland.

CRNI Executive Director Dr Robert Russell said:

“We are so saddened by news of the death of Kofi Annan, a great friend and supporter of political cartooning, especially through his patronage and support of Cartooning For Peace which has contributed tremendously to the growing awareness that political cartoonists are first responders in the complicated struggles around free speech.”

Alongside cartoonist for Le Monde Plantu, president of the Salon International de la Caricature, du Dessin de Presse et d’Humour Gérard Vandenbroucke and a diverse panel of cartoonists including former CRNI board member Ann Telnaes, Annan founded CFP with a large scale exhibit at the UN in 2006 and served as their honorary president since.

His legacy will be assured by their continuing work on behalf of cartoonists in jeopardy such as Musa Kart, this year’s International Press laureate.

 To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

Zunar free at last as sedition charges are dropped

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Malaysian media confirmed news of the acquittal on July 30th.

As long-time followers will recall our Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award winner in 2011 had for the last several years laboured under nine counts of sedition. However the recent change in Malaysia’s government had given us all reason to hope that the case would be dismissed.

Coming shortly after the end to his travel ban, this means Zunar can now resume his international career free from worry of extradition or imprisonment.

The only matters remaining from his previous woes under the Najib Razak regime are his own complaints concerning confiscation of artwork and seizure of books. We hope he is a successful in these court proceedings as his defence has been and that thereafter this long period of strife will fully become a thing of the past.

A jubilant Zunar leaves court.

Meanwhile we turn our attention to this year’s award recipient, to be announced in September, and those other past winners still facing threat such as Musa Kart, expected back in court to appeal his conviction on charges of abetting terrorism. The sorry tale of his persecution and prosecution by the Turkish government took a bizarre twist earlier this month when the travel agent Kart was accused of contacting as a means to reach religious fundamentalists was made a minister in President Erdoğan’s cabinet.

Corruption is everywhere and cartoonists who speak truth to power are easy targets. We’ll continue to work in their defence.

 To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

WordPress acquiesces again over Latuff blog

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Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff reports via Twitter receipt of notice that his website will be
denied to Pakistan’s internet users, withdrawn by WordPress after a request from the Pakistani government.

It’s hard to identify what the basis of their objection might be. Latuff apparently hasn’t posted about the country in over three years and when he last did was perfectly even-handed and the butt of the joke was the USA.

UPDATE: Latuff himself ascribes the controversy to a 2012 cartoon decrying Islamophobia in Europe which has been misconstrued as a blasphemous insult to Islam in itself. On a related note, a 2008 cartoon altered to include racist and antisemitic tropes and misascribed to the right wing American cartoonist Ben Garrison was “accidentally” retweeted by Libertarain politician Ron Paul before a hasty deletion and apology earlier this month.

This situation has arisen before, when a similar instruction from the Turkish government was also obeyed by those running the popular website platform. As we highlighted at the time a threat of loss of service across a whole nation is clearly taken seriously by providers and is a worse scenario for those living and working there. However in abetting the vendettas of dictators against individual bloggers WordPress has time and again set a dangerous and unwelcome trend.

Cartoonists in the Asian subcontinent are quite accustomed to similar instances of online censorship, particularly on Facebook. In the past twelve months there have been two notable instances of Facebook posts resulting in harassment of Indian cartoonists and a past CRNI Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award winner came under attack once again.

Of course, all such moves are ultimately counterproductive. In Latuff’s case his cartoons will only have greater caché in Pakistan and interested parties will seek them out via other platforms and websites.

UPDATE: Latuff further confirms that once again the Turkish government has successfully petitioned WordPress to target his blog.

 To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

Algeria: international cartoon festival “sabotaged”

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Cartoonist reports cancellation of international exhibition, contends he is victim of a conspiracy.

Our attention has been drawn to the cancellation of the inaugural Salon international de la caricature, du dessin de presse et d’humour d’Oran, Algeria which had been set to take place in May.

The organizer, cartoonist Nour El Yakine Ferhaoui was forced to change plans and rather than have a physical show put on a “Salon virtuelle” in co-operation with Le Matin newspaper.

In an interview with the Algerian edition of Le Matin Ferhaoui names his guarantors as Kouider Bouziane, the current Director of Culture of the city of Oran and Boucif Belhachemi, the regional director of the National Office of Copyright and Neighboring Law of Oran (ONDA) before the entire project was “derailed”.

Further he accuses an unnamed Algerian cartoonist closely associated with FIBDA (the International Comics Festival of Algiers) of harrassment and making statements to the effect that he “sabotaged” the event in Oran. Ferhaoui tells us he has been rendered “persona non grata” in Algeria.

CRNI’s regional representative in Canada, cartoonist Guy “Bado” Badeaux covered the Salon on his blog earlier this year. Ferhaoui had attracted participation from dozens of cartoonists in twelve nations as well as across Algeria and made arrangement for visas for six foreign visitors during his event.

Professional jealousy comes with the territory in the creative sector but the suggestion that cartoonists would stymie each others’ endeavours in a country like Algeria where colleagues have been actively silenced by the authorities on more than one occasion is especially troubling.

Ferhaoui will attend the 37th Salon international de la caricature, du dessin de presse et d’humour in Saint-Just-le-Martel, France later this year and provide a fuller account of the incident at the annual meeting of France-Cartoons.

 To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

Zunar: “Now they have changed the government, what am I going to draw?”

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Zunar is back on the road again after his travel ban was lifted and passport returned.

Hard to believe it was as long as two years ago that we shared Zunar’s last Tweet from Kuala Lumpur airport when he reported the seizure of his documents and the imposition of a travel ban.

As he heads off to the UK, an excellent article in The Observer details his feelings after the change in Malaysian government and the loss of both his arch tormentors and chief muse in the form of Najib Razak and Rosmah Mansor.

Safe travels, Zunar!

 To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

To Turkey’s next President: “Your term starts in critical times; protect and strengthen media freedom.”

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Today CRNI is a co-signatory to an open letter urging the next president of Turkey to reform and improve working conditions for journalists and media workers in Turkey.

Your term starts in critical times. Freedom of expression in particular has declined drastically in the last couple of years in your country. To this day, more than 150 journalists remain in prison, thousands of critical thought leaders have lost their jobs and a large number of them have left the country.

We, the undersigned international freedom of expression and professional organisations, ask you to prioritise the following points in the upcoming term to uphold the rule of law and to protect and strengthen media freedom and independent journalism in Turkey:

– release all journalists who have been imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression and their journalistic work and drop all charges against them.

– restore the impartiality of the judiciary and ensure the functioning of the Constitutional Court by refraining from exerting any political pressure on it and guaranteeing the implementation of its decisions.

– reform the system of criminal law that is currently being abused in order to prosecute and jail journalists, specifically the Penal Code and the Anti-Terror Law, which are among the main obstacles to freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Turkey.

– de-centralise and end state control of the regulation of media. Let media policy and media regulation processes be implemented by journalist associations, media representatives and academics, in compliance with the jurisprudence of the ECtHR.

– support the independence and pluralism of the media by redesigning ownership restrictions, support public broadcasting media to become free from political and economic interference, ensure media pluralism by subsidising small independent local media. Legal, political and administrative measures must be adopted to ensure free and fair competition in the media.

– reform and monitor the Press and Advertising Agency (Basın İlan Kurumu) to ensure that independent newspapers are not deprived of public advertising revenue. The appointment of media and internet regulatory bodies such as RTÜK and BTK should be transparent and must answer to the principles of media independence and freedom.

Read the full text and see all the co-signatories on the European Federation of Journalist’s website.

To Report a Cartoonist in Danger  Email Cartoonists Rights Network

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