Since the famous Danish ‘Mohammed’ cartoons (the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 editorial cartoons in 2005 claiming they were an attempt to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship) prompted a discussion of where and whether to set the limits of free speech, and the cold-blooded killing of 14 people, including several cartoonists, at the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo made us all the more aware of the potent danger of funny drawings, we have seen increasing examples of how seriously some people take cartoons, and the lengths to which they’d go to silence their creators.
Let me begin by giving you some international examples of cartoonists currently or recently in trouble. These cartoonists are victims of a kind of state censorship – their governments are the ones with an interest in keeping them silent.
The Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) has helpfully supplied the following information.
Firstly, there’s Zunar, from Malaysia, whose cartoon book Sapuman: Man of Steal has been banned since October 2017 because authorities declared it “detrimental to public order”.
According to Zunar: “This is just one of the long list of harassments and intimidation by the BN (National Front) government. Since 2009, my office in Kuala Lumpur has been raided a few times and thousands of my cartoon books have been confiscated. The printers, vendors, and bookstores around the country that carry my cartoon works were also raided. I was arrested several times and am now facing nine charges under The Sedition Act. The government also bans me from traveling abroad since June 2016.”
Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart was one of 11 journalists from Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper to be arrested under President Erdogan’s crackdown on dissenting voices. They were held for nine months without trial. His trial was held in September and he has been released pending sentencing.
My colleagues and I, in particular Andrew Marlton (First Dog on the Moon), with the support of The Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI), sought to raise awareness of the plight of Ali Dorani, a 25-year-old Iranian asylum seeker on Manus Island, who goes by the name of Eaten Fish. He drew harrowing cartoons of his experiences in detention. He suffered rape and abuse both prior to his fleeing Iran and since being in detention and is beset with mental illness, requiring treatment.
Ali Dorani, a 25-year-old Iranian asylum seeker on Manus Island, who goes by the name of Eaten Fish, has drawn harrowing cartoons of his experiences in detention.
As Marianna Giannacopoulos says in Overland magazine: “Eaten Fish draws imminent harm: his artwork exposes for all who care to look the violence that will occur in conditions of detainment and secrecy. In doing this, his art also historicises the camp by, for example, embedding into his drawings the headstones of those who have already suffered harm to the point of death.”
In an update to his story, Ali Dorani thanked supporters after being granted artist’s residency through International Cities of Refuge, in a Norwegian city. “He reports that people have been unbelievably kind to him, and that his world is changing quickly,” according to CRNI.
Most recently, we have heard of Ramon Esono Ebalé from Equatorial Guinea, an outspoken graphic novelist and cartoonist, who was until recently a resident of Paraguay. He was arrested in the streets of Guinea and jailed for months because he draws cartoons critical of the country’s ruling family, but they held him on “unspecified”, or trumped up, charges of money-laundering and currency counterfeiting. He has just recently been awarded CRNI’s Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning.
While he has been cleared of charges he remains in prison despite being slated for release on 2 March.
What do these examples indicate to us? That people in power having something to hide, that they see cartoonists as powerful in exposing their deception or undermining their power base.
Cartooning for Peace
In 1991-92, the French cartoonist Jean Plantureux (Plantu), of Le Monde, hatched an idea along with Kofi Annan, the then Secretary-General of the UN.
In 1991 Plantu met Yasser Arafat of Palestine and in 1992 he met Shimon Pérès, of Israel, and had them successively sign the same cartoon. For the first time, the signatures from both sides of the Middle East conflict appeared on the same document, one year before the Oslo agreements. The meeting was filmed. Reuters described the meeting as “cartoon diplomacy”.
Later, the bloody reactions to the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands-Posten led to the founding meeting of 12 international cartoonists.
in October 2006, called together by Kofi Annan and Plantu, for a seminar on “Unlearning Intolerance”.
Thus Cartooning for Peace was founded, an international network of committed media cartoonists who aim to fight with humour for the respect of cultures and freedoms.
As a member of the network, I have had the opportunity to meet cartoonists from many different countries, cultures and conditions. Some have told of more subtle examples of cartoonists navigating their boundaries. Sometimes they – and their governments – know better than to be obvious in their opposition.
I met two Iranian cartoonists some years ago and I wanted to know how they got away with making strong statements in their work while the threat of suppression loomed. They explained to me their mastery of “deniable ambiguity” – they could say a lot in a cartoon that was purely visual – but they could also deny that was what they meant when called into question, as interpretation is up to the beholder. Ironically, working within constraints is sometimes what makes our cartoons more powerful, as we find ingenious ways to say the unsayable.
Another cartoonist, an Algerian who now lives and works in France, spoke on a panel about how he was quite regularly arrested and hauled before a judge for offending the president or the military. He would even spend the odd week in prison, but would always be allowed back to his job. In this way, he acknowledged, the authorities could be seen to be taking action, but not alarming the public by definitively removing a key indicator of the freedom of their society: the publication of cheeky cartoons in their newspapers.
The cartoonist, when praised by his freer European colleagues for being so brave to go through what he did, declared that he didn’t want to be thought of as brave – he just wanted to be free to have fun, like we did!
The Danish cartoons
Cartoons have attracted controversy since caricaturist Charles Philippon drew King Louis Philippe as a pear.
Propaganda drawings of perceived enemies, stereotypes of tyrants, rude depictions of clerics in humiliating positions, silly caricatures of my scripture teacher – they have always sought to push boundaries and transgress society’s niceties.
Before the Charlie Hebdo attack, the Mohammed cartoons were the most obvious reference point for cartoonists discussing their free speech. They were commissioned initially as an experiment to see the degree to which professional illustrators felt threatened. The culture editor was interested in the idea and wrote to the 42 members of the newspaper illustrators’ union asking them to draw their interpretations of Mohammad.
Fifteen illustrators responded. Publication of their work led to protests around the world, including violent demonstrations and riots in some Muslim countries. However, it triggered a discussion about freedom of expression regarding religion, in a notionally secular society.
Among cartoonists at international gatherings I attended, there was a fair spectrum of views between those from secular western countries that don’t recognise blasphemy as a legitimate offense, and those from countries where the place of religion in government and society is dominant so cartoonists would tread more cautiously around it, if not out of respect for the religion, then out of care for their lives. And there were those who declared: you just shouldn’t touch religion.
What bothered me was this – it appeared there was no middle ground between believing certain criticisms can be made of Mohammed and his teaching, using the standard cartoonist vernacular of a depiction of the character in question, amidst the ad absurdum extension of his logic and the notion that the mere depiction of this prophet is blasphemous and punishable, potentially by death.
In this case, a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the cartoon, its quality of artistry, or the validity or persuasiveness of its point is of no use, since the assessment of blasphemy is absolute.
This means that any attempt at nuanced criticism of the sacred must steer carefully around boundaries that don’t exist in secular society in order to avoid the charge of provocation. Or put another way, I must refrain from offending your god, whether I believe in it or not.
At one conference I attended, a young Moroccan cartoonist declared that “of course the Danish cartoonists should not have drawn what they drew, as they knew it would all blow up!”. Thus all responsibility for consequences was placed with the cartoonists.
To me, this is unsatisfactory, as I would like to be able to separate the criticism of a cartoon on its own merits from a charge of blasphemy. I would like room for discussion over whether provocation or shock value is a good enough justification for a cartoon. Was the purpose noble or base, illuminating or destructive? Did it seek to expose the hypocrisy in a way that might persuade the unconverted, or just galvanise opposing sides?
Still, even these things don’t reduce a cartoon to an assessable point of whether “punishment was or was not warranted”. A cartoonist lives in society and is subject to the laws of that society regarding, say, incitement to violence. Offending someone’s extremely held beliefs is one thing; responding violently to provocation is another, and no cartoon, drawing, scrawl, or scribble, no matter how offensive you find it, justifies a violent response.
I would like to have been able to say that about the Danish cartoons, as I could in the case of, say, Bill Leak’s infamous Indigenous father and son cartoon “I see what he was trying to say, but the point didn’t stand up to scrutiny.” Instead, one had to be on the side of the mediocre cartoons to not be on the side of the terrorists!
The Charlie Hebdo attack
The Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in 2015 brought the power and danger of cartoons to our consciousness in a way the Danish cartoons had not. This felt much more like “us”, probably because the French and their culture of comics and satirical magazines are much more familiar to us than the Danish press.
It affected me personally. I had lived in France, been a disciple of French cartooning since my college days and only the year before the attack, I’d attended a Cartooning for Peace conference where I got to know Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, who was one of the cartoonists killed.
I spent the day following the attack talking to radio and TV, writing a piece for the newspaper and generally intellectualising the whole event. It wasn’t until the evening that it sank in in an emotional way. “They were killed for doing what I do.”
Thirty years ago, while living in Paris, when I told people drawing was my thing, they would point me in the direction of the various “grands” of the cartooning world. There was the gentle social observation of the bourgeoisie by Sempé, the wicked skewering of the intellectual classes by Claire Bretécher, political satirist Plantu, and the rabid political satire of the satirical weekly newspapers Canard Enchainée and Charlie Hebdo. And there was the vast array of comic book art for all ages. You didn’t have to like them all or agree with them but they were part of their cultural heritage.
Ten years ago, while attending a cartoonist conference in France and having established a career of my own as a political cartoonist, I was struck by how differently the French treated and regarded their cartoonists. There would be media with TV, radio and newspaper interviews, and a public keenness to attend talks and exhibitions far greater than we could ever drum up at home. French kids would be brought along by their parents to ask questions, as if learning about cartoons were a vital part of their education. And it is.
In comparison, it always felt like we were lesser creatures back home – an amusing sideshow, but not a serious part of the public discourse.
I think the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the international politics of free speech, has changed that. We’re no longer the affable larrikins or clowns. Perhaps seeing our own kind pay such a price made us take ourselves more seriously – or as the world became more serious, and our jobs more rare, we found ourselves obliged to justify our existence and consider the power of what we do.
Charlie Hebdo was again a case of religious limits to freedom of expression with the sensitivities of a fanatical religious minority justifying violent retribution in a secular majority country.
Navigating identity politics
How we navigate these various sensitivities – be they religious, racial, cultural or other diversity – has become the minefield of our time, for cartoonists as well as writers.
We can find ourselves as easily on either side of an argument depending on whether we identify with the minority or are comfortable with the idea that they don’t enjoy the support of our society in general.
I feel I need a run-up and a clear awareness of where the exits are before I go anywhere near identity politics. But I watch how it operates, and how it occasionally consumes the unwary, including some of my colleagues, and I exercise extreme caution. There but for the grace of God. It could be my turn any day. Today? This is about the fraught and febrile area of social or self-censorship.
We’re living in a time of “culture wars”. Interestingly, this can seem to be waged more virulently from one side against a perceived enemy, resembling more the social politics of Britain and the US than our own. But it keeps columnists and commentators from the Murdoch stable gainfully employed, so we are left to navigate our way around real or confected outrage.
I have learned the value of suspended judgment. Refraining from buying in to conflict is the new Pilates work-out. There has never been a more exciting time to self-censor.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied and her fateful and outspoken Anzac day social media post (that many believed diminished the important significance of Anzac Day) is a case in point. I theorise that the attack on Ms Abdel-Magied was, at least in part, pay-back for what conservatives felt were her many attacks on their “comfortable white” privilege – their right to be who they had always been and assume what they had always assumed.
The Bill Leak/18C cartoon saga (when the cartoonist was investigated by the Human Rights Commission for breaching section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act after publication of his cartoon that depicted an Aboriginal man holding a beer can and was unable to remember his son’s name) was not far behind in stoking this resentment, and the wounds were still fresh.
Abdel-Magied was made to experience the “other end of the pool” regarding her own dramatic denunciation of cultural misappropriation a year before, when she walked out of author Lionel Shriver’s Brisbane Writers Festival keynote speech, offended that the author would dare to write from the perspective of a less privileged character. Those of us from Shriver’s generation (and privilege) pondered this question with some discomfort as we considered all the pieces of culture we had unquestioningly grown up with which would, in retrospect, be deemed unacceptable by the new cultural adjudicators.
Thus, Abdel-Magied’s Anzac posting (“Lest we forget: Manus, Nauru, Syria Palestine...”) was a flashpoint opportunity for telling this Sharia-defending-minority-warrior that she dare not offend our sacred beliefs with offensive disingenuity. Suddenly, the great defenders of free speech were the ones ready to punish the blasphemer.
Of course, Leak was entitled to draw his cartoon and I defended his freedom to draw cartoons that have the potential to offend. Considered in the light of our current hyper-sensitivity to offence, the wording of 18C including “offend and insult” is perhaps onerous, especially with regard to satire and cartoons. Fortunately we artists are protected by 18D! Am I ready to die on a hill for the right to offend and insult somebody because of their race? I find it hard to be moved to fight. But this might all look very different in the light of a more censorious regime, and we need to remember that the right to express dissent applies equally to those we disagree with.
Bill Leak had previously faced death threats from Islamist fanatics, such that he actually had to move house, so he was probably in no frame of mind to be nice about offense.
World Press Freedom Day, Jakarta 2017
Thanks to my connection with Cartooning for Peace, and again because the work of cartoonists and artists is now being seen within the wider scope of press freedom, I was invited by UNESCO to participate in the World Press Freedom Day conference in Jakarta in May 2017. Specifically, my commission was to “draw the gist of the talks”.
This was a great opportunity to step away from Australian politics and to see how the world is dealing with the phenomena of fake news, hate speech, rampant manipulation of social media, dangers and risks for practitioners of journalism, photography, film-making, art and so on.
Most interestingly for me, it was a chance to listen to discussions across a wide range of perspectives regarding where the responsibility for the protection of journalistic and artistic freedom lies.
The rise of hate speech, fake news and the threats to traditional news media are global concerns. Most interesting was the juxtaposition of the whole theme of Press Freedom in a country still boasting of being a secular democracy yet where there is rising influence of religious authority. That week, the Christian ex-mayor of Jakarta was being handed his sentence for blasphemy after widespread Muslim protest against him during the mayoral election campaign.
I was prepared to hear how this could be handled, how they viewed the rights of artists under such a government. There were proud statements from representatives of Indonesia, Bangladesh and other non-western countries about how much they love and respect artists, and how much freedom theirs enjoy. This was politely countered by an expat Bangladeshi film-maker, who said, “This is a wonderful picture you paint – if only it was not completely unlike the reality...”. He went on to detail his own experience of the state-sanctioned restrictions in place.
During one discussion, after hearing an Indonesian Ministry of Culture representative speak proudly of new laws in place to protect and promote artistic freedom, I posed a question: “Is it possible to have artistic freedom while there are blasphemy laws in place?” After some hesitation, the government representative admitted that laws to punish those who would take punishing blasphemy into their own hands – be they clerics or fanatical mobs – had not been passed.
The other panelists answered my question, unequivocally. This protection, such as it is, is inadequate. So long as there is tacit approval or permission from the state for vigilantism or civilian enforcement, the artist or writer is not safe.
So there it is. It turns out that leadership and strong, independent governance is important.
Trump
I could do a whole talk on Trump, but I think there’s already a great deal that’s been said, and with greater expertise – I note Justin Gleeson’s Free Voices address at the 2017 Sydney Writers Festival explored the very serious side of the Trump era.
I won’t deny that the cartoonist experiences a special kind of glee when a public character emerges on the scene offering such a rich resource of material with which to work. We have all had, and continue to have, our fun with Tony Abbott, while exposing his ignoble motivations.
But the thing about Trump, as we all know, is that what he does is no game, and we would be foolhardy not to take his actions and utterances seriously in what they seek to do while looking out for those whose interests he serves. The power and abuse of social media is still greater than we can quantify, and we do well to be especially sceptical.
I don’t believe I have lived through an era before where truth and facts have been so comprehensively devalued and undermined – and with them the credibility of the news media. America has effectively been bamboozled into an abusive relationship with a narcissist who seeks to gaslight and confuse the public such that they no longer know what or who to believe.
Therefore I believe it is the job of cartoonists to remember, while we make fun of the absurdity of Trump’s antics, to maintain the mindset that ‘this is not normal’, and it’s a long way from harmless. We in Australia have never been so attentive to the goings on in American politics, because we can see it affecting the whole world, and its antecedents in history, and we can see its tricks being willingly appropriated by some of our more cynical politicians.
The local situation
Finally, I’d like to talk about the situation in Australia. It would be easy to point a finger at all the awful abuses of freedom elsewhere and assume that we have it all worked out here. Of course, we only need to look at how the government has controlled and limited access to and reporting about this country’s offshore detention, to know that it’s relatively easy to curtail freedom where there’s sufficient will on both sides of politics.
We have long been aware of the various commercial interests juggling for control of our media, and the undermining of our public broadcaster, to know that a free press can never be assumed.
When Gina Rinehart held a majority stake in Fairfax, I took every opportunity to draw cartoons critical of her various mining conflicts of interest, just to make sure there was no editorial power being exerted. A droll colleague used to call these my “letters of resignation”.
At Fairfax, I have enjoyed what I consider to be enormous freedom, occasionally having a cartoon questioned for legality or taste, and extremely rarely having them denied publication. I joke that I’ve been there for so long that I know where the boundaries are with my eyes closed.
I also receive the occasional cranky letter – often addressed to “Mr Wilcox”, and I sometimes have to explain myself to unhappy members of the clergy who feel I’m sometimes a bit mean to the Catholics.
However, the area of most contention, throughout my 27-odd years and particularly since 9/11, has been Middle Eastern politics. This is a universally shared experience, when speaking to cartoonists from other countries. Any cartoon referring to Israelis and Palestinians must be parsed and questioned, lest it might be seen to unfairly criticise Israel.
If a cartoon makes it into the paper, it will receive letters or the editor will receive phone calls from a well-organised lobby, letters and rights of reply will need to be published, the “record corrected” and occasionally the cartoonist in question will be asked to apologise and agree to have a “chat” and be educated as to the rights, wrongs and “facts” of the situation, perhaps including a visit to the Jewish Museum.
As I say, I have a keen sense of where the boundaries lie in my newspaper, I am accorded a great deal of trust and I will always argue to publish a cartoon where I stand by what I’m saying in it. The other thing is, I’ve often worked for two mastheads at once, so when the one paper has said no, I’ve given it to the other to run. No problems! Ultimately it is my editor’s choice, but a good cartoon will find a way to be seen.
Cartoonists in Australia don’t generally face the kinds of threats affecting some of our less-free international colleagues. The biggest challenge for cartoonists here is to retain a job in an ever-shrinking traditional media landscape. Assuming you have a job, the next biggest challenge is maintaining your independence of voice from commercial, political, religious and social pressure.
Without it, there is no freedom to fight for.