Satire on the Front Line

Join cartoonists Aseem Trivedi and Martin Rowson for an illustrated talk on human rights and political cartooning.

Indian human rights defender Aseem Trivedi has been arrested, imprisoned and shut out of mainstream Indian media for his powerful ‘Cartoons Against Corruption’ series. When Aseem was imprisoned in 2012, the Guardian’s celebrated political cartoonist Martin Rowson drew a cartoon condemning his arrest. Today, Aseem is a renowned advocate for detained human rights defenders around the world. He has drawn cartoons in solidarity with activists including imprisoned activist Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain and detained blogger Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia. Aseem will join Martin in London to discuss, draw and debate freedom of expression and solidarity across borders.

#frontlinesatire

The event is hosted by Front Line Defenders, English PEN, PEN International and Index on Censorship.

Martin Rowson is a multi award-winning cartoonist, whose work has appeared regularly over the past 33 years in the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, The Times, New Statesman, the Spectator, the Morning Star, the Scotsman, the Irish Times, Index on Censorship, Time Out and many other publications. His books include graphic novelisations of T S Eliot’s The Waste Land, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His memoir about clearing out his late parents’ house, Stuff, was longlisted for the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize and his collection of cartoons about the last Government, The Coalition Book won the Paddy Power Political Book Award for Political Humour & Satire while in 2006 he received the prestigious Premio Satiri de Forte di Marmi International Satire Award. Martin is chairman of the British Cartoonists’ Association, a vice-president of the Zoological Society of London and in 2001 was appointed Cartoonist Laureate for London by Ken Livingstone in exchange for one pint of London Pride per annum (currently 12 years in arrears).

@MartinRowson

Aseem Trivedi is an Indian cartoonist and human rights defender. He played a leading role in India’s 2010 anti-corruption movement with his ‘Cartoons Against Corruption’ series, for which the government suspended Aseem’s website and charged him with sedition, breaching the IT Act, and ‘insulting’ national symbols. Aseem was arrested after launching the Save Your Voice campaign to protest censorship in India. He spent three days in prison and went on hunger strike demanding the government repeal the legislation used to target him and other activists. In 2015, following years of peaceful activism, India’s Supreme Court struck down the legislation under which Aseem was imprisoned. Later that year, he created a comic magazine dedicated to telling the stories of human rights defenders at risk around the world. Today, while the sedition and IT charges have been dropped, Aseem still faces up to three years in prison for ‘insulting’ the government through his art.

@aseem_trivedi