While I had been aware of their campaigning for years prior – in particular on the cases of Musa Kart in Türkiye, Atena Farghadani in Iran, and Eaten Fish, at that time a prisoner in Australia’s “processing center” on Manus Island, PNG – I was first brought into the CARTOONISTS RIGHTS fold in 2015, this was some months after the attack at Charlie Hebdo.
By then Robert Russell was already a frail man, on regular dialysis and losing his sight. It would be longer-serving colleagues of his who’d fill me in on what I’d missed; the irascible, irrepressible, even reckless defender of human rights and proponent of free speech who’d made a name for himself in international development, helping establish or bolster NGOs in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
As the years advanced and the time to end his fieldwork approached, and having come to appreciate the special contribution cartoonists make to nascent democracies as well as the problems they can encounter under repressive regimes, Bro decided to establish a relief network and spend his semi-retirement helping cartoonists in trouble. After some years of research and experimentation, at the tail-end of 1999 he incorporated Cartoonists Rights Network International in the state of Virginia where he made his home.
Two more decades later, I would sit at his kitchen table in Burke with his remarkable wife Malie, the same spot where a great many other cartoonists had sought counsel or received comfort, and Bro would ask me to take over his work. He had done enough, too much in fact.
Others will speak of the bravery and resolve they witnessed when the going got tough, the long letters or phone calls they received when they needed support, or the tongue-lashings doled out when someone had provoked his ire.
For many of them, people who – thanks to Bro – I have the privilege to count as colleagues and friends, his passing means the loss of the man who literally saved their lives, and that’s exceptionally hard to take. To me he was a sweet, funny, excessively indulgent mentor, a man I had too little time with before geography, illness, and the various madnesses of the 2010s and ’20s intervened.
The organisation renamed our Courage in Cartooning Award in his honour when he stepped down in 2019 and going forward that will be only the most obvious way in which we keep his legacy intact and memory alive. The kindest, most generous thing he did was let me get on with things. And we’ll continue to do so.
Terry Anderson
Execute Director, Cartoonists Rights
Cartoonists RightsGagged campaignEaten Fish Campaign
Robert Russell a remembrance
Terry Anderson writes:
While I had been aware of their campaigning for years prior – in particular on the cases of Musa Kart in Türkiye, Atena Farghadani in Iran, and Eaten Fish, at that time a prisoner in Australia’s “processing center” on Manus Island, PNG – I was first brought into the CARTOONISTS RIGHTS fold in 2015, this was some months after the attack at Charlie Hebdo.
By then Robert Russell was already a frail man, on regular dialysis and losing his sight. It would be longer-serving colleagues of his who’d fill me in on what I’d missed; the irascible, irrepressible, even reckless defender of human rights and proponent of free speech who’d made a name for himself in international development, helping establish or bolster NGOs in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
As the years advanced and the time to end his fieldwork approached, and having come to appreciate the special contribution cartoonists make to nascent democracies as well as the problems they can encounter under repressive regimes, Bro decided to establish a relief network and spend his semi-retirement helping cartoonists in trouble. After some years of research and experimentation, at the tail-end of 1999 he incorporated Cartoonists Rights Network International in the state of Virginia where he made his home.
Two more decades later, I would sit at his kitchen table in Burke with his remarkable wife Malie, the same spot where a great many other cartoonists had sought counsel or received comfort, and Bro would ask me to take over his work. He had done enough, too much in fact.
Others will speak of the bravery and resolve they witnessed when the going got tough, the long letters or phone calls they received when they needed support, or the tongue-lashings doled out when someone had provoked his ire.
For many of them, people who – thanks to Bro – I have the privilege to count as colleagues and friends, his passing means the loss of the man who literally saved their lives, and that’s exceptionally hard to take. To me he was a sweet, funny, excessively indulgent mentor, a man I had too little time with before geography, illness, and the various madnesses of the 2010s and ’20s intervened.
The organisation renamed our Courage in Cartooning Award in his honour when he stepped down in 2019 and going forward that will be only the most obvious way in which we keep his legacy intact and memory alive. The kindest, most generous thing he did was let me get on with things. And we’ll continue to do so.
Terry Anderson
Execute Director, Cartoonists Rights
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