2 responses to Syrian Cartoonist Akram Raslan Reported Dead by Damascus News Agency

1. 

   Terry Anderson said on September 22, 2015

   The worst was long feared, perhaps even expected but that doesn’t make the formal confirmation any less upsetting.

   http://www.facebook.com/153040051376973/photos/pb.153040051376973.-2207520000.1442915930./726314350716204/?type=3&theater
2. 

   Bill Stott said on September 23, 2015

   Absolutely, Terry, especially when you compare Akram Raslan’s fate – for cartooning authority – with Ted Rall banging on and on about whether or not he was handcuffed for jaywalking. Try jaywalking in Damascus.

   Because I’m having a nice comfy life here in the west, I find it difficult to understand the workings of minds like Bashir Assad’s, and those who run murderous outfits like Islamic State or Boko Haram. That they are natural targets for cartoonists is obvious. Assad, especially, knows that. His answer is simple. Kill the cartoonist.

      But Assad, and other people like him can’t kill all cartoonists everywhere.

    PCO’s already had a little pop at deluded losers who, given AK47s, murdered cartoonists in Paris, through the Draw the Line Here book. Personally, I’d love to try to produce a second, much wider ranging book of cartoons, sales of which could help the persecuted, if ways of doing that could be found, but which, first and foremost, seriously took the piss out of people like Assad and any other head of state, anywhere, whose administration is so morally threadbare that it cannot stand trenchant graphic criticism. We get away with SO much in this country . UK cartoonists, especially UK political cartoonists are extremely good. They operate in a regime where it IS possible to draw the P.M. as a condom.     Assad wouldn’t stand a chance against our political cartoonists on a level playing field. But he does what he does behind closed doors/borders. Wouldn’t it be great to produce a book of cartoons targeting tyrants, especially Assad, and persuade the RAF to drop thousands of copies on Assad’s bunker ? 

   Pie in the sky ? Maybe.