Political Cartooning after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

Jonathan Guyer in Nieman Reports:

The Charlie Hebdo murders, and an attack aimed at Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had drawn images of the Prophet Muhammad many Muslims considered offensive, a month later in Copenhagen, focused attention on the threat to Western satirists. But political cartoonists around the world are at risk.

In Turkey in 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister, brought a criminal complaint against cartoonist Musa Kart, who in the midst of a corruption investigation into Erdogan’s inner circle depicted a hologram of Erdogan standing watch as thieves stole money from a safe. Lawyers sought nine years imprisonment; Kart was acquitted but Erdogan has appealed. In Ecuador, one of the best-known cartoonists in Latin America, Javier Bonilla, whose pen name is Bonil, is accused of “socioeconomic discrimination” for mocking the stutter and questioning the suitability for office of Agustin Delgado, a congressman from President Rafael Correa’s ruling party. In Singapore, the government charged Leslie Chew with sedition for the cartoonist’s criticism of state discrimination against ethnic minorities in his strip “Demon-Cratic Singapore.” And in Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s government also accused cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, known as Zunar, of sedition, for a cartoon criticizing a corrupt judiciary. “He points out corruption,” says John A. Lent, editor in chief of the International Journal of Comic Art, of Zunar. “He’s what a political cartoonist is supposed to be: a watchdog on government.”

More here.