Cartoon by Emad Hajjaj

Cartoon Movement joins a statement by The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other press freedom organizations and condemns the arrest of four Egyptian journalists, including cartoonist Ashraf Omar. Here is the official statement:

Rights organizations condemn spate of Egyptian journalist arrests, demand immediate release, accountability

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), along with 33 rights and press freedom organizations, condemns the recent arrests and enforced disappearance of four Egyptian journalists – Ashraf Omar, Khaled Mamdouh, Ramadan Gouida, and Yasser Abu Al-Ela – and calls for their immediate release.

The undersigned also call on Egyptian authorities to drop all charges against the journalists, stop targeting them for their work, end the practice of concealing the status or location of those in custody, swiftly and transparently investigate allegations that at least two of the journalists were tortured or treated inhumanely, and hold those responsible to account.

The list of arrested journalists and the violations against them includes:

• Ashraf Omar, a cartoonist for the independent news outlet Al-Manassa, was arrested on July 22, 2024, and taken to an unknown location for two days. He appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP) on July 24, where he was falsely charged with offenses that include allegedly joining a terrorist group with knowledge of its purposes, spreading false news, and misusing social media. The SSSP also questioned Omar about his cartoons on Egypt's economic conditions and the country's electricity shortage, according to Al-Manassa. Omar's wife reported that he was tortured, subjected to beating, and threatened with electric shocks during his enforced disappearance. The security authorities noted in the official arrest report that Omar was arrested on July 24, in an apparent attempt to cover up the two days of his disappearance, according to the Cairo-based human rights organization, Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE). On September 1, the SSSP renewed Omar’s detention for an additional 15 days pending investigation in Case No. 1968 of 2024 (Supreme State Security).

• Khaled Mamdouh, a journalist for the independent news website Arabic Post, was arrested on July 16 and taken to an unknown location. During his arrest, his eldest son was physically assaulted by security forces, and his electronic devices, including his laptop and mobile phone, were seized. After six days of enforced disappearance, Mamdouh appeared before the SSSP on July 21. The SSSP charged him with joining a terrorist group with knowledge of its purposes, financing a terrorist group, and spreading false news. Mamdouh’s arrest report was dated July 20, not the date of his actual arrest on July 16, in what AFTE also believes was an apparent attempt to cover up his enforced disappearance. On August 26, the SSSP renewed Mamdouh’s detention for an additional 15 days pending investigation in Case No. 1282 of 2024 (Supreme State Security).

• Ramadan Gouida, a journalist for the independent Al-Youm news website, was arrested on May 1 while on his way home in the Menofia Governorate and taken to an unknown location. After 40 days of enforced disappearance, he appeared before the SSSP, which accused him of joining a terrorist organization and spreading false news. His wife reported that Gouida’s arrest resulted from his name being mentioned during an interrogation of another journalist who previously worked with Gouida at the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated media outlet Freedom and Justice News in 2012. On August 26, the SSSP renewed Gouida’s detention for an additional 15 days pending investigation in Case No. 1568 of 2024 (Supreme State Security).

• Yasser Abu Al-Ela, a journalist and member of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, was arrested on March 10 and taken to an unknown location. During his interrogation before the SSSP, Abu Al-Ela informed the prosecutor that he had been subjected to physical and psychological torture during the 50 days of his enforced disappearance, according to The New Arab. His wife, Naglaa Fathi, and her sister were detained on April 27 at an unknown location for 13 days after filing several complaints with Egyptian authorities about her husband’s disappearance. Later, both women were charged with joining a terrorist organization and spreading false information on Facebook. On August 25, the SSSP renewed Abu Al-Ela’s detention for an additional 15 days pending investigation in Case No. 1568 of 2024 (Supreme State Security). During the renewal session, Abu Al-Ela declared that he would begin a hunger strike to protest his treatment in prison, which includes solitary confinement, a ban on family visits, and restrictions on leaving his cell during designated times.

The arrest of the four journalists has sparked a wave of fear and trauma among Egyptian journalists that CPJ has interviewed, particularly those who had been detained previously or had worked with Arabic Post, where Mamdouh was employed. On August 21, journalist Moataz Wadnan, who was arrested in February 2018 while working as a reporter for Arabic Post — known as HuffPost Arabi at the time of his arrest — and released in July 2021, wrote on his Facebook account that he left Egypt “in search of safety and stability, fearing a repeat of the detention.” Since he left last month, the Egyptian security forces have raided his home twice, searching for him.

In addition to these four journalists, authorities are also holding 11 other journalists, many of whom have been in custody for longer than the two-year legal limit for pretrial detention. Furthermore, authorities are using various tactics to curtail press freedom in the country, including banning independent media websites, employing the law to legally harass journalists and media outlets, and targeting Egyptian journalists in exile and their family members in Egypt.

The signatories to this statement call on Egypt to comply with its constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press and prohibits custodial sanctions against publishers. In addition to releasing all imprisoned journalists and dropping false charges, the government must stop blocking news websites and refrain from targeting Egyptian journalists and their family members within the country and abroad.

This new spate of arrests highlights the shameful record of the Egyptian authorities in targeting journalists and independent media, underscoring why Egypt has remained among the top 10 jailers of journalists worldwide in recent years, according to CPJ data. The arrests also demonstrate how enforced disappearance and torture have become common practices by the Egyptian security forces against journalists and others. The Egyptian government must take the steps outlined above to end this recent resurgence of repression against journalists and their families and commit to ensuring a free and vibrant press throughout the country.

Signed:

1-ARTICLE 19

2-Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)

3-Association of Canadian Cartoonists

4-Australian Cartoonists Association

5-Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

6-Cartoon Movement

7-Cartooning for Peace

8-Cartoonists Rights Network International

9-Committee for Justice

10-Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

11-Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms

12-Egyptian Front for Human Rights

13-Egyptian Human Rights Forum (EHRF)

14-Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)

15-Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media (EOJM)

16-EuroMed Rights

17-European Cartoon Award

18-Forum for Humor and the Law

19-Freedom Cartoonists Foundation

20-Freemuse

21-Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)

22-HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement

23-Human Rights First

24-IFEX

25-Index on Censorship

26-Khartoon Magazine (khartoonmag.com)

27-Law and democracy support foundation

28-Middle East Democracy Center

29-Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (PCO)

30-Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

31-Samir Kassir Foundation

32-The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)

33-Toons Mag

34-World War 3 Illustrated

Cartoon by Mo Qasem

Cartoon by Hassan Bleibel

Cartoon by Ramses

Our monthly newsletter is out, featuring the latest news, introducing our latest cartoonists and our most popular cartoons of the last month. Sadly, the theme of June seemed to be ‘satire in trouble’. Read it here.

We are proud to welcome Shira Badakhshi to Cartoon Movement. Growing up in Afghanistan, she was drawn to political cartoons from a young age, inspired by renowned Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali. She fled to Iran before the complete takeover of the Taliban, where she now lives in exile. Read more about her story here.

Originally published by Cartooning for Peace.

We are dismayed to learn that the Iranian activist, artist, and cartoonist Atena Farghadani has been sentenced to a total of six years in prison; five years for “insulting the sacred” and one year for “propaganda against the State”. This sentence was handed down by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Court on Monday, June 10, as confirmed by lawyer Mohammad Moghimi via social media. The maximum penalties are indicative of the Iranian regime’s long-standing determination to persecute and silence this courageous rights defender.

Atena Farghadani had been detained since April 13 2024 after attempting to display a drawing in a public space, not far from the presidential palace in Tehran. Over the past decade, she has been regularly monitored and harassed due to her art and activities opposing the repression of rights in Iran, especially those of women and children.

Previously jailed in 2014-16, and again for a short period last summer, Atena Farghadani risks coming to harm within the penal system. In 2023 she alleged an attempted poisoning. At the time of her arrest this year she reported that she suffered severe injuries from Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel.

Artwork by Atena Farghadani was recently exhibited in Norway, at the sixteenth Oslo Forum for Freedom (OFF) organized by the Human Rights Foundation, dedicated to “reclaiming democracy”. In the presence of human rights defenders from around the world, Atena Farghadani’s representative Mohammad Moghimi ensured that her voice was heard, a voice that is both brave and righteous, and is targeted because she dares to defy oppression and injustice in her country.

Our organizations call for her immediate release and that she be returned to her family unharmed.

Signatories:
Africartoons
Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)
Association of Canadian Cartoonists
Cartooning for Peace
Cartoon Movement
Cartoonists Rights
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Forum for Humor and the Law
Freedom Cartoonists Foundation
Freemuse
Index on Censorship
Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

By Emanuele Del Rosso

It is a Sunday in January. My wife and I have just returned home to Amsterdam from our usual end-of-the-year trip to Italy. It is evening, almost ten o'clock. The doorbell rings. I answer the intercom.

It's the police. "It's the police," I tell her. She looks at me worried.

I open, and a middle-aged officer comes up, introduces himself, apologizes for the late hour, and then tells me that he was told I published a drawing in a French magazine, the week before.

I nod, "Charlie Hebdo." The name doesn't seem to tell him much. He scribbles some notes, snaps a picture of the magazine, which I produced for him – I had gotten it through friends –  and hands me a business card of the Dutch police.

"The Iranian government has very long arms," he tells me, with a serious expression. He expects me to contact them at that direct number, written on the business card, if I notice anything strange. He hopes, for himself and me, that there will be no need for that. And he leaves.

My cartoon had been published on that January 7th in Charlie Hebdo, in a special issue, dedicated to Iranian mullahs, after the death of Mahsa Amini and the protests that followed it. Forty works from cartoonists around the world, as well as from the staff of the French satirical magazine.

After publication, Iranian religious and government authorities threatened the magazine and, by extension, all published cartoonists.

Without protections

This was just a short, unimportant story. A small scare and nothing more. Fourteen months after that Sunday visit, nothing has happened to me yet.

But the cartoonists who encounter a different, far worse, fate are dozens. And you have to count them one by one, case by case, because there are no reports that give precise numbers.

The organizations Cartooning for Peace, Cartoon Movement, and Cartoonists Rights stated, "2020 could see the global community of cartoonists irrevocably damaged. In part the circumstances are unavoidable; the economic depression will lead to the loss of many, and we have seen that attrition is already underway. But far worse, deliberate repressive action will silence yet more." This was 2020. Things have certainly not improved in the past four years.

If we want to give a few examples, take Gábor Pápai in Hungary. In May 2020, after a cartoon pointed out as blasphemous, Gábor and the newspaper he works for, Népszava, were fined, with the obligation to publish an apology, signed by Gábor, in the same box where the cartoonist publishes his work.

Or, outside the EU, in Jordan, Emad Hajjaj, who again in 2020 was arrested without even knowing why, and then found out that the reason was a simple tweet with one of his cartoons, which apparently could damage Jordan's diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates.

Or in Turkey, Zehra Ömeroğlu, accused of obscenity for one of her drawings, who faces more than six years in jail if found guilty.

And these are just the lawsuits, filed against cartoonists to get them to stop drawing, or against the newspapers that publish them. To push them to fire the cartoonists. To make political satire become a liability.

Then there is the violence. The online trolling, the death threats, the illegal arrests, the disappearances, the kidnappings, the beatings, the torture. The murders.

Such is the case of Pedro Molina, who in 2018 found a stranger trying to write "plomo" on his front door. Plomo means "lead" in Spanish, and it means "death" in Nicaragua, because you angered someone powerful and criminal. Pedro fled to the U.S., on Christmas Day, because there are fewer controls at the airport on December 25.

Worse still was Ali Farzat’s fate. Ali, Syrian, had his hands broken by President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 so that he would stop drawing his subversive satire.

His colleague and countryman Akram Raslan, instead, did not survive torture. He died in prison in the spring of 2013.

These are just some of the many stories of cartoonists unprotected, neither by the newspapers they work for, nor by the authorities, nor by public opinion.

So much success, so much precarity

But why don’t we care about cartoonists? We need to take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture. The fact is that political satire is like a dying person who has never been better. A real oxymoron.

On the one hand, the number of cartoonists employed by news outlets continues to decline. In the U.S. alone, one of the places where "newspaper" political satire was born, it has dropped from about 150 cartoonists in 1997 to about 20 in 2023.

But at the same time, social media gives a lot of visibility to cartoons, which go viral, passing from eye to eye, from click to click, and going around the world. It happens because satirical cartoons are such a powerful medium. They make us smile, laugh, get angry, and most importantly, they make us think.

The problem is that, if all it takes to attract the anger of the satirized is to be talented and to go strong on social media, deciding who is a cartoonist and who is not becomes problematic – although to me, "cartoonist is, who cartoonist does."

And so it also becomes complicated to define cartoonists as journalists.

What is certain, however, is that cartoonists encounter the same risks as journalists. And journalists have it pretty rough.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 78 were killed in 2023, and nearly 800 were detained, according to Reporters Without Borders. This year instead, in Gaza alone, 95 journalists have already lost their lives, again according to CPJ numbers.

As we said, there is no exact data on cartoonists, but one only has to look at all the cases that Cartooning for Peace or Cartoonist Right cover to see that there are so very many emergencies.

When I attend some event related to the world of journalism – and I often do, since I work for the European Press Prize – I'm always there in the third or fourth row raising my hand to ask the same question to the speakers: "You've talked about the safety of journalists. But what about cartoonists?" And when I then talk to the speakers privately, I realize that the cartoonist category is losing pieces: you see cartoons galore online, but cartoonists are always talked about very little, and those of them who work in the newsroom, on a regular contract, are replaced by freelancers when they retire. Freelancers are easier to dump, in case some drawing sparks controversy-which it certainly can.

This weakens the profession. And if it then happens that someone tries to write “plomo” on the doorstep of the house of a cartoonist, or they arrest another without explanation, or they break his or her hands: who will defend them, if they don't have a newspaper behind their backs, and if they don't have official data to illustrate the dangers they face?

The next time we see a cartoon

I am under no illusion that an editorial is enough to convince us, but if I had to decide where to start I would say: the next time we see a cartoon on social media, or read about some satirical cartoon that has angered someone powerful, let's think about who drew it.

Behind a cartoon is always some cartoonist, sitting in his or her little room, paid perhaps, certainly often alone, even more often precarious. Whether they are journalists or not, cartoonists deserve to be protected when they are doing their job and someone is trying to put spokes in their pencils.

I, meanwhile, continue to raise my hand at events about journalism.

This editorial originally appeared on March 21, 2024, in the Italian newspaper Domani.

Cartoon by Tjeerd Royaards.

CM editor Tjeerd Royaards gave an interview to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands about the current situation for cartoonists, the work Cartoon Movement does to promote political cartoons and our 10-year partnership with the Ministry.

Read the full interview here.

By Tjeerd Royaards, Cartoon Movement editor

These past few days, I had the opportunity to spend some time getting to know the cartooning scene in Hungary. Cartoon Movement was in Budapest for Cartoons in Court, a research project into satire and the law. The research team consists of four academics from various universities around the world. Representing Cartoon Movement, I am the fifth member of the project as a so-called stakeholder, providing a link to actual practitioners of satire (cartoonists).

As Hungarian democracy slowly slides towards authoritarianism under the leadership of Victor Orbán, being a cartoonist in Hungary is increasingly challenging. I met with some cartoonists from the cartoonist association at the Association of Hungarian journalists. The fact that they are part of the journalist association is a good thing, but that's one of the few positives that I can say about political cartoons in Hungary (aside from the excellent cartoons and the cartoonists themselves, of course).

First of all, there is basically only one full-time cartoonist in the country. His name is Gábor Pápai and he is perhaps the most renowned cartoonist in Hungary, making a daily cartoon for Népszava, the last independent newspaper left. The rest is working part-time, unpaid, or is struggling to find any publication to run their work, as the vast majority of Hungarian media is under control of Orbán and therefore not very open to political satire.

Cartoon by Gábor Pápai

One other gem of political satire can be found on the covers of economic magazine HVG, which has a decade-long tradition of making sharp satirical covers.

A cover of HGV with Victor Orbán and Vladimir Putin from April 2022.

Gábor and his colleagues have gotten into trouble numerous times in the past two years and Gabor's newspaper is currently in the process of appealing to the European Court of Human Rights after the Hungarian Supreme Court ruled one of Gabor's cartoons to be insulting to Christians. I'm not going to go into the details of the court proceedings here, but you can head over to the website of Cartooning for Peace for a detailed explanation of both the cartoon and the court case. You can also watch this video, made when Gábor was named one of the recipients (alongside Ukrainian cartoonist Vladimir Kazanevsky) of the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award 2022:

Suffice it to say that the red lines are many. Religion is one, but other cartoonists have gotten in trouble for depicting Orbán as a painful boil on the body of Europe, or by drawing the Hungarian people as pigs. Although the latter two examples haven't lead to court cases, the artists and their publications have faced threats and harassment from government officials and people close to the regime.

'

His underlying condition caused dependence'

Cartoon by Gábor Pápai, for which his newspaper had to pay a fine and publish a formal apology.

'

I don’t have the slightest wish to have it, not even on my back but it stings and itches as if there was an ugly ulcer on my splendid body, Doctor.'

'Incurable'

Cartoon by Weisz Béla

In this comic the Hungarian people are portrayed as pigs. In panel 1, they are arguing about politics; in panel 2, Orbán comes along asking if he can help rid hem of the 'migrant pest'. In panel 3, two pigs who support Orbán are trying to get the third pig in line; and finally, in panel 4, they all end up in the same place, the butcher shop.

Cartoon by Marabu

On November 8, we held an event at the Central European University, to present our ongoing research. I invited Gábor to come and speak about his work and the challenges he faces. Unfortunately, students couldn't attend in person,  as the CEU is no longer allowed to teach students in Budapest, because Orbán took away the accreditation and all the student facilities have moved to Vienna.

Gábor was pessimistic about the future of press freedom in his country, which in his opinion will go the same route as Russia, restricting free speech further and further. In the face of this growing oppression, Gábor has continued to create sharp cartoons, trying to provoke the authorities. However, the new strategy of the government has veered away from stimulating public outrage and court cases, opting for silence and indifference instead. This indifference, along with the insidious and unrelenting takeover of Hungarian media, might well prove successful.

Stay tuned for a recording of the event and a more in-depth interview with Gábor Pápai in the near future.

This cartoon by Portuguese cartoonist Rodrigo de Matos, which ran on our homepage last week, stirred up some controversy and even made one of our Ukrainian cartoonists decide to leave Cartoon Movement. Many people consider it to be offensive to Ukraine. Although I concede in retrospect the cartoon might not be our best editor's choice of the year, I do feel the need to explain why we chose it and why I feel it is a valid selection.

First of all, a bit of context: six months have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine and interest in the war in Ukraine is slowly receding. After hundreds, if not thousands of photos and cartoons about the violence and atrocities taking place, people are getting desensitized.

Our aim with the daily editor's choice is to make people think about what's happening in the world. Since the start of the invasion, we published many cartoons that protest the war, Putin's unprovoked bloodshed and the horrors of war as they are inflicted on the Ukrainian people. But as the war continues, these cartoons are less and less effective, as people get used to them. To continue to keep the war top-of-mind, we need to find new perspectives. With Rodrigo's cartoon, we thought we did.

Then onto the cartoon itself, the imagery that Rodrigo chose to use, and our interpretation of it. In the image we see a woman who is a symbol for Ukraine. She is battered and bruised, and pregnant as well. She is a victim of Russian aggression. The baby in her belly is 'hate' as we gather from the word written there. Two horns protruding make it clear that hate is evil. Since Russia forcefully invaded Ukraine, we could conclude the woman is a victim of rape.

The imagery is sharp. But sharp imagery is what cartoons often employ to jolt people into thinking about the subject at hand. In this case, Rodrigo wants us to consider the consequence of the war. Ukraine has been brutally raped, and the (logical) result is hate. The analogy of rape and a resulting child is effective, because the consequence (hate) will be long-lasting. Even after the war ends, it will probably take decades for Ukrainians and Russians to reestablish something approaching friendly relations.

This is a prospective we had not seen in a cartoon yet, and that's why we decided to make it an editor's choice. Yes, the imagery is uncomfortable, but that is sometimes needed to effectively address an issue.

I do understand that people get upset about the image, especially Ukrainians. It's not nice to see your country portrayed as a victim of rape. But in this case we felt the chosen symbols were legitimate given the point the cartoon is trying to make. We might have been wrong (although I continue to think it's a valid cartoon) and we'll probably make our share of controversial editor's choices in the future. When dealing with editorial cartoons, this is bound to happen from time to time.

Tjeerd Royaards
Cartoon Movement editor

We don't usually offer things for free, but renowned Chinese dissident artist Badiucao has created a series of protest posters to mark the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. Check 'm out here below. You can download large versions here; feel free to post, share and use them to protest against the Chinese regime.

Cartoonists Rights Network International has launched a new service for cartoonists who get in trouble. From CRNI's website:

CRNI wants to hear from you if you are, or you represent, a cartoonist who fears criminalisation. The Cartoonists’ Legal Advisory Network exists to provide reliable and rapid guidance to those cartoonists who face arrest, court action or harassment from the police or judiciary.

Who do we support?

-Those who have been arrested, cautioned or questioned by the police, or have reason to believe they soon will be.
-Those who have received notification of a court action pertaining to criminal charges.
-Those who believe a change in the laws of their nation will immediately render them liable to criminal prosecution.

You can read more details and contact the legal department of CRNI here.