Cartoon by Eaten Fish, a man without a nation to call his own.
The Manus Regional Processing Centre, Papua New Guinea has been making headlines again in recent weeks: firstly on Good Friday when prolonged gun fire on the camp’s perimeter aimed at detainees’ accommodation was the apparent result of a disagreement with locals over a football match; secondly for outrageous comments made by Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton about the same incident; and lastly after a meeting between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Vice President Mike Pence indicated that the USA would indeed honour the refugee relocation agreement made in the final days of the Obama administration.
An apparent reversal of fortune – President Donald Trump had famously described the deal as “dumb” and promised to re-examine its merits – sounds like good news for the Manus detainees, including Eaten Fish, the 2016 winner of our Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award.
However it is worth remembering that Eaten Fish’s refugee status has never been recognised, making him ineligible for any help that the USA might offer and that in any case comes only after lengthy and exhaustive “extreme vetting”, the kind of process during which he would certainly fail to give an adequate account of himself due to his diverse mental health problems.
This raises the question of what happens next since the camp is set to close before the end of the year. Eaten Fish exists in an ill-defined legal category, officially notified by the authorities of their intent to repatriate him to Iran months ago but in all likelihood facing a future as a prisoner on PNG. One possibility is transfer to a new facility that we understand is being planned in Port Moresby. Its Bomana Prison already houses several former detainees.
A report that ran recently in The Age and for which Janet provided information gives an accurate depiction of life on Manus for Eaten Fish’s compatriots and the many hundreds of men who have endured a unique, very modern and seemingly intractable method of torture over the last four years. The testimonies of journalist Behrouz Boochani, comedian and children’s entertainer Mehdi Savari, and Loghman Sawari – like Eaten Fish just a boy when he arrived on the island – are utterly heartbreaking.
And as for Eaten Fish, we call again for the only humane outcome after suffering such acute institutionalised abuse: immediate asylum on mainland Australia.
Following President Erdoğan’ victory at last weekend’s referendum on presidential powers, Turkish authorities informed the lawyers of imprisoned cartoonist Musa Kart and his Cumhuriyet colleagues that their trial date has been set for July 24th 2017.
The announcement follows the indictment that was issued two weeks ago, some five months after their arrest. Kart is charged with “helping an armed terrorist organization while not being a member” and “abusing trust”, prosecutors stipulating a maximum sentence of twenty-nine years.
Prior to that, on March 6th, lawyers for Musa Kart and colleagues lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that Turkey’s Constitutional Court had not acknowledged receipt of their December 26th appeal against the jailing of their clients pending trial, and that this pretrial detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights’ guarantees of freedom and security, freedom of speech, and limitation of rights.
In addition they stated that the detentions have produced a deterrent effect on those wishing to express their opinion, whilst amounting to judicial misconduct with a political aim.
“As far as we know, and in accordance with the lawyers who are in contact with the courts, the trial could take place in July. If that is the case it means [Musa] will then have been imprisoned for nine months, the indictment only issued two weeks ago on April 4th, with no concrete evidence. Our father and husband, as he has always said, is not guilty of anything other than drawing cartoons, having been a critic of all those in power, including those he is accused of supporting, as a political cartoonist should be, and as his cartoons clearly show.
CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper covered Musa’s story on Monday with contributions from CRNI as well as Prof. David Kaye, Special Rapporteur to the UN on freedom of expression & opinion.
Please note the #FreeTurkeyMedia campaign led by Amnesty International continues all the way to World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd.
CRNI has been one among the many dozens of organisations to condemn the Turkish government’s criminal indictment of multiple journalists from Cumhuriyet newspaper, including cartoonist Musa Kart.
Kart faces a maximum of twenty-nine years for “helping an armed terrorist organization while not being a member” and “abusing trust”; in brief, Recep Erdoğan’s regime contends that Cumhuriyet staff aided and abetted terrorist organisations such as the PKK as well as the Gülen Movement, alleged perpetrators of last summer’s attempted coup.
A brief glance through Kart’s work reveals the truth. Like almost all cartoonists his chief concern is scrutiny of those in power, whoever they may be.
The pair of cartoons below illustrate Kart’s concerns in recent years as Turkey’s government has become ever more authoritarian and its society less secular.
This cartoon puts Recep Erdoğan’s words after the attempted coup last July in the mouth of his exiled opponent, and alleged mastermind behind the coup, Fethullah Gülen. He thereby employs irony to suggest that the two men are akin. Critics of the Gülen Movement consider it a cult of personality and similar observations can be made about the Erdoğan regime.
As far back as 2004, Kart was depicting Gülen as an infiltrator in the Turkish military.
In these cartoons, Kart derides those who would overturn democracy or suppress freedom by force, be they terrorists, insurgents or military forces.
Of course, the subtext to current events is that Erdoğan has attempted to silence Kart twice before, as prime minister and then president. After successfully defending his right to freedom of expression in court against a thin-skinned head of government Kart received our Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award. It is clear that under the emergency powers deployed since July the president has taken the opportunity for revenge on a cartoonist he has long despised. On the 16th of April the Turkish people voted to grant their leader even greater power.
“[Kart] drew injustices, hypocritical political pawns, vandals, warmongers, irresponsible beings, terror lords. He has done whatever a humor master needs to. He did his job; and he has done a good job. He criticized strongly, and obviously infuriated some people.
In the past, until quite recently actually, they used to keep canaries inside coal mines, maybe you know about them. The canary’s duty was to die. When its sensitive body collapsed as a sign of the accumulation of toxic gasses in the mine, the miners would recognize the danger and would have time to flee. The canary, by stopping singing and dying, would signal the danger in advance.
Stay strong. We are writing this letter to assure you of our solidarity, to remind you that you are not alone, to tell you that your sarcastic take on the news is cruelly lacking as we witness Turkey’s transformation into an authoritarian regime.
After your arrest last October, on entirely spurious grounds, you have been held in pretrial detention ever since, imprisoned in disgraceful and intolerable conditions.
For long months you have been cut off from the world and deprived of your freedom. And what was your crime? To want to practice your profession in a completely independent manner, to want to tell your fellow citizens the truth, and with humour. Being a cartoonist is not just a job for you, it is a real calling, a calling that earned you the media freedom prize from your colleagues in the association of Turkish journalists.
How terribly the media in Turkey have been treated for almost a year now!
Stay strong, Musa. Turkey, your fellow citizens, your readers, we all need you. Without you, without a free and independent press, citizens are no longer free and independent. You are the guardians of democracy, even more so in troubled times, and and we are grateful to you for that.
Even thousands of kilometres away, even still unknown to you, we are at your side, committed to freedom, a free press and a democratic Turkey.
Throughout the month Amnesty International’s #FreeTurkeyMedia campaign has gathered cartoons drawn in solidarity with Musa from around the world. Expect more to proliferate as he comes to trial.
After five months of imprisonment Turkey has finally, formally indicted the staff from Cumhuriyet newspaper including cartoonist Musa Kart who, if found guilty, faces a twenty-nine year sentence.
As widely reported across Middle-Eastern media and by human rights organisations around the world yesterday, a total of nineteen names appear in the indictment with a variety of charges and proposed sentences for each suspect.
Musa Kart is accused of “helping an armed terrorist organization while not being a member” and “abusing trust” and prosecutors have stipulated a maximum sentence of twenty-nine years. His family have confirmed that the reporting of the charges is correct.
The news comes as the #FreeTurkeyMedia campaign gets underway to highlight the plight of journalists in the county, all though the month preceding World Press Freedom Day.
Musa Kart is a past winner of our Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award, having twice over been taken to court for cartoons deemed insulting by President Erdoğan. His work is often critical of Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian regime, but also of Fethullah Gülen, the alleged leader of last summer’s attempted coup, and of terrorism and extremism in Turkey overall. The substance of his work belies the government’s contention that he’s a Gülen Movement or PKK stooge.
In a 2004 cartoon published in Cumhuriyet, Kart depicts Fethulla Gülen as having infiltrated the Turkish military after the 1980 coup d’état – “Date 12 September 1980 – We have found ideal/suitable ground to climb up!” – Kart is accused by the current regime of supporting Gülen.
“It is with the growing alarm that we read about the indictment just released against the Cumhuriyet journalists, including our friend, colleague and excellent cartoonist Musa Kart.
We absolutely condemn this embarrassing effort on the part of the Turkish government to further disappoint its own people. This indictment should be quashed and put on a shelf to gather dust. It is not worthy of the people of Turkey.
Every freedom loving country in the world should watch events in Turkey with care and see how an apparent slide into tyranny has continued step-by-step over time with apparent ease and impunity. This can happen in any country when freedom of speech, especially investigative and critical journalism, is throttled and the court system’s independence is eliminated.
We call on President Erdoğan to remember his early years when so many people in Turkey had such great hopes and faith in their own future. Membership in the European Union was making steady and effective progress, and all the world was watching with such anticipation.
CRNI’s Northern Europe representative joined members of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists Organisation (PCO) in London yesterday to protest against the Australian government’s detention of refugee cartoonist Eaten Fish on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
The cartoonists documented the day’s activities on Twitter.
Once more we call upon the Australian government to meet its commitments under international law, attend to Eaten Fish’s urgent medical needs and grant him asylum.
CRNI extend out thanks to the committee at PCO for their leadership on the #AddAFish campaign, its members and all cartoonists around the world who contributed.
CRNI’s regional representative in Palestine Mohammed Saba’aneh reports of an Israeli military raid on the home of fellow cartoonist Osama Nazzal.
Saba’aneh says he received a call from Nazzal after soldiers broke in to his home, ransacked his studio and confiscated cartoons. More than 30 soldiers are said to have surrounded his work space at his father’s home and questioned his family about him. Osama lives in Ramallah city but his studio is in the village of Kafr Ni’ma to the west.
IMEMC News has the story.
Nazzal was one of several cartoonists subjected to online harassment by the European Institute Against Incitement last year.