Drawing for peace - a signature cartoon by Plantu

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Jan 8 2015 (IPS)

“They are cowards who react to satire by going for their Kalashnikovs.” That was how renowned French cartoonist Plantu described the killers of 10 media workers and two policemen in Paris Wednesday.

One of the murdered journalists, cartoonist Bernard Verlhac who went by the pen name of Tignous, was a member of Cartooning for Peace, the organisation that Plantu founded with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, following the protests sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Tignous worked for Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine that the murderers targeted.

According to police and eyewitness reports, two hooded gunmen entered the premises of the magazine and opened fire in the late morning. After they fled the scene, in a car driven by a third participant, 12 people were confirmed dead and at least 11 injured, some critically.“Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw” – Plantu, co-founder of Cartooning for Peace

Video footage, filmed from neighbouring buildings, showed the attackers killing an injured policeman as he lay in the road. On Wednesday night, the police presence in France’s capital city was huge as security officials tried to track down the attackers who reportedly had been identified.

French President François Hollande said in a public address that the killers would be brought to justice and “severely punished” for their actions. Appealing for unity, he said the attack was an assault on national ideals and freedoms, including freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, many French residents took to social media to express solidarity with the magazine’s staff, posting images with the words “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), and thousands gathered on the historic Place de la Republique in Paris, and in several other cities in France.

The magazine had been a target for several years, since it published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. In 2011, assailants firebombed its offices in the city’s 11th district, and its cartoons have been considered offensive by various groups over the past two years. Its cover this week featured the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose newly published novel “Soumission” portrays a future France living under an Islamic regime.

But condemnation of the murders came from all sides of the religious and political spectrum on Wednesday. The French Muslim Council said the “barbaric action” was also an attack “against democracy and the freedom of the press,” while the Protestant Federation of France expressed “revulsion” and said the “hateful” acts could have no justification in any religion.

Irina Bokova, the director-general of Paris-based UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, said she was “horrified” by the attack. “This is more than a personal tragedy,” she stated.  “It is an attack on the media and freedom of expression.  The world community cannot allow extremists to silence the free flow of opinions and ideas.  We must work together to bring the perpetrators to justice and stand together for a free and independent press.”

Rights group Amnesty International said the attack was a “black day” for freedom of expression and a free press, while the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) called the assault a “barbaric act of violence against journalists and media freedom.”

EFJ president Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard stressed that journalists today face a greater range of dangers and threats than ever before.

Last year, 118 journalists and media workers died for doing their jobs, according to the EFJ and other organisations, bringing the total to more than 700 deaths over the past decade.

On Nov. 2, the United Nations marked the first international Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. The organisation said that the majority of the killings “were deliberate murders committed in connection with journalists’ denunciation of crime and corruption.”

Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoons had poked fun at the head of IS, or the Islamic State, and had even seemed to forecast an attack, saying that fighters had until the end of January to “present their wishes” – a reference to the French tradition of government ministers presenting their “voeux” to the press each new year.

From around the world, condemnation of the acts and condolences for the victims’ families were transmitted to France by heads of state and foreign ministers. But perhaps the most profound messages came from colleagues in the media world – cartoonists.

Plantu said that Cartooning for Peace, where staffers worked late into the evening, had received thousands of messages and drawings.

“We are angry,” he said on French television. “Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw.”

He said that Cartooning for Peace had been created for the very purpose of creating bridges between people, religions and regions and that cartoonists’ work was “stronger” than the “barbaric acts” committed by the “cowards” on Wednesday.

Plantu told IPS at a conference last year in the southern French city of Montpellier that the work of the non-profit organisation was important in promoting dialogue, understanding and mutual respect by using cartoons as a universal language.

At that conference, one of the featured participants was Tignous, who showed himself to be funny in both speech and drawing. As he and a journalist got lost trying to make it to the conference centre, he cracked jokes about his legs being too short to jump fences, but he ended up being the one to find the right direction.

Later at the conference, he produced cartoons that had the audience laughing out loud. For him, and other cartoonists, the work was about freedom to poke fun at extremists and political hypocrites.

At the creation of Cartooning for Peace, the founders said the initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonist’s influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide.”

According to commentators, Charlie Hebdo may have inflamed passions with its satire, but the killings on Wednesday seemed an attempt to end all debate, and to foster further division in France, where the extreme-right National Front party has been rising in popularity.

“The targeted assassinations were staged in order to establish terror and muzzle journalists, cartoonists but also every citizen,” Cartooning for Peace said in a statement. It added that the attackers would not have the last word because “art and freedom will be stronger than any intolerance.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Cartoonist Nadia Khiari, aka Willis From Tunis, in Cannes. Credit: A.D. McKenzie

By A. D. McKenzie
CANNES, May 20 2013 (IPS)

By now, most movie fans know that American actor Leonardo DiCaprio was in this southern French city for the annual Cannes Film Festival. But fewer people are aware that Willis from Tunis and Kichka of Israel were also here.

Willis is the pseudonym of Nadia Khiari, a cartoonist from Tunisia whose acerbic and ironic drawings are gaining an international following, mainly through social media and selected journals. Michel Kichka is the prominent Belgian-born, Israel-based cartoonist whose work is viewed eagerly in his adopted country.

In Cannes, they joined fellow cartoonists Plantu of France and Dilem of Algeria to highlight the work of Cartooning For Peace, a non-profit association that aims to foster dialogue, promote freedom of expression and recognise the journalistic work of cartoonists.

“We have Muslim cartoonists, Jewish cartoonists, Christian cartoonists – all with the idea of contributing to peace,” said Plantu, whose drawings have appeared for more than 40 years in the influential centre-left French newspaper Le Monde.

Plantu and Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, founded Cartooning For Peace in 2006 in the wake of protests and riots around the world sparked by Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

The group now comprises more than 100 cartoonists representing 40 nationalities and all the world’s major religions.

During the 12-day film festival, which ends May 26, members’ works are on exhibition in the huge hall where official film screenings and press conferences with the “stars” take place.

Alongside the glitter and glamour, Cannes’ organisers said they wanted to draw attention to threats against freedom of expression. They’re also holding an auction of original cartoons during the festival to fund Cartooning For Peace’s efforts, which include providing protection and legal assistance to cartoonists. "We don't need a political party to be our intermediary with God."
-- Nadia Khiari

Standing beside one of her drawings, Khiari (Willis From Tunis) told IPS she found the atmosphere “frenetic”, but she said that the support of Cannes, Cartoonists For Peace and the people who write to her made her feel less isolated.

Connecting with others “gives me energy and the desire to go on,” she said. “If I continue doing this, it’s for all the people who find my cartoons interesting and who send me comments. I receive lots of messages of encouragement, and that helps me because I feel less alone.”

Willis is aware of the dangers that cartoonists face in certain countries. In 2011, Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat was badly beaten by security forces, who symbolically tried to destroy his hands.

Cartooning For Peace launched a campaign to get him out of Syria and to hospital, where plastic surgery saved his fingers, according to Alice Toulemonde, a spokesperson for the group. Farzat, whose cartoons criticised the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, is now able to draw again.

More recently, the group and Amnesty International have highlighted the case of Venezuelan cartoonist Rayma Suprani, who has been receiving threats related to her work, as she is not a fan of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

For Tunisia’s Khiari, it was a major political event that pushed her towards cartooning. An artist and art teacher, she launched Willis From Tunis during the “Jasmine Revolution” that led to the Arab Spring. She took her pseudonym from the name of her cat, Willis, who was born during the last speech of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“The president was there promising press freedom and a host of other things, and the absurdity of the speech inspired me to do some cartoons,” she recalled of the beginning in 2011. “Of course I didn’t know then that this would be his last speech.”

One of her cartoons on display in Cannes shows a news reader in dark glasses (a reference to the film “Men In Black”) telling viewers that after the commercial break they will forget about “23 years of dictatorship, the revolution, martyrs and the quest for liberty and solidarity” but that they will continue to “be miserable”.

“I feel that I’m one of many who want the same things – happiness, employment, freedom. It’s not complicated,” she added. “All Tunisians are interested in politics. We are 11 million politicians. I express myself through cartoons and humour. For others it’s through blogging, articles, photos and other means. It’s visceral.”

Khiari said she has a special interest in protecting women’s rights, which are constantly under threat in Tunisia. She drew cartoons about a proposal to add to the constitution that “women are complementary” to men. The proposal was withdrawn after women took to the streets to protest.

“We raised our voices to say ‘I’m not complementary to anyone, I’m my own individual being’,” Khiari said. “We now know that if we react, go out and protest, there are means to change things. Personally, I’m fighting for freedom of expression and the rights of women.”

In her cartoons, she also shows concern for the direction the country has taken since Ben Ali was forced to flee.

“The slogan of the revolution was dignity, liberty and employment. That’s what we wanted,” she told IPS. “The issue wasn’t morality or religion. Each person’s spirituality is a personal matter, but politicians are spending time turning attention from the real issues, which include the economy and employment, and they’re talking about morality.”

“Meanwhile, poverty and joblessness still exist and nothing is being solved. We don’t need a political party to be our intermediary with God.”

Encouraging debate through humour is also a tool for Kichka, Israel’s leading political cartoonist, who believes that artists have to be true to themselves.

“As a cartoonist, I have to take sides,” he told IPS. “When I see certain things happening in the world, I feel I have a commitment. I am not drawing for my own pleasure.”

“You have to take into consideration that you can be badly misunderstood, but that doesn’t mean you can’t express yourself, especially in a free country,” he added. “A sense of humour is essential for living.”