Iraq: comics and cartoonists lives at risk

Posted by Elena Perotti on November 29, 2006 at 6:43 PM

After TV star comic actor Walid Hassan Djahaz was murdered earlier this month, media observers got interested in the reality of Iraqi cartoonists too. Today’s issue of French Le Monde interviews Yasser Abdulrahim and Khoudair Al-Hemyare, who have published cartoons in Iraqi newspapers since Saddam Hussein was in power.

Abdulrahim and Al-Hemyare claim that even though under the dictatorship there was a list of forbidden subjects, it was still possible to work in some sort of security. In particular cartoonists were not allowed to draw Saddam Hussein, his family, his ministers, religious subjects, and in general “to violate the reputation of Iraq”.

After 2003 “we can make fun of the United States, of Europeans and of the invasion, but we still cannot touch religious symbols or leaders, nor the resistance”, declared Abdulrahim. to Le Monde. When Al-Hemyare proposed a cartoon about an ayatollah, the answer of his editor in chief was “Are you crazy? Do you want us all to be killed?”

All in all during the Saddam Hussein era cartoonists were afraid of the State, “now we are frightened by the non-existence of the State”, they admit.

Source: Le Monde

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