Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Our Cartoonist Osama Hajjaj Faces Possible Trial and Prison

Our CagleCartoonist and friend, Jordanian cartoonist Osama Hajjaj, faces a possible trial and prison term, of one to three years, for drawing the cartoon below. Osama pleaded “not guilty” in a court hearing yesterday.

According to Cartooning for Peace …

“The cartoon was broadcast by the private television channel Roya TV and then deleted after they and the cartoonist received many negative comments. Taking into account the reactions, the cartoonist immediately explained on his Facebook page that it was a misunderstanding and that his cartoon dealt with birth control from a social perspective and not with religion. He was also notified of a complaint filed by two lawyers which led to legal proceedings under Article 150 of the Penal Code and Article 15 of the Cybercrime Act.

Article (150) of the Penal Code states that: “Any writing or speech aims at or results in stirring sectarian or racial prejudices or the incitement of conflict between different sects or the nation’s elements, such act shall be punished by imprisonment for no less than one year and no more than three years and a fine not to exceed two hundred dinars (200 JD).”

Article (15) of the Cybercrime Act states: “Whoever commits any crime punishable under any applicable legislation by using the information network or any information system or website, or participating in, interfering or inciting to commit it, shall be punished with the penalty stipulated in that legislation.”

Osama Hajjaj, who was accompanied by his lawyer, emerged from the hearing free. He is subject to a travel ban and he is awaiting the verdict of the investigation conducted by the Ministry of Public Affairs, which will determine the possibility of a trial. He faces from one to three years in prison and a fine of JD 200 (EUR 236).

Cartooning for Peace expresses his solidarity with Osama and will be following the investigation. It calls for all charges to be dropped, considering that the cartoonist stated in good faith that he did not want to offend his country’s religion.”

Osama writes on his Facebook page:

Today I represented in front of the Prosecutor General of Oman in a case that was stirred because of a caricature drawing about birth control. I did not intend to offend at all. I was charged with violation of Article 150 of the Penal Code (inciting women) and violation of the electronic crime law… And here I thank the fair and honest judiciary for understanding freedom of opinion and expression and that I am not a criminal and I did not mean to offend in drawing and I thank lawyer Marwan Salem.

Comments on social media have been harsh, with some readers urging that Osama be jailed for the cartoon. Last year Osama received credible death threats and an outpouring of hate for another cartoon showing the beach and a woman wearing traditional Islamic dress …

Osama’s CagleCartoonist, big brother, Emad Hajjaj, was arrested and imprisoned last year in Jordan on the charge of drawing a cartoon that insulted an Arab country. Emad still faces trial.

Jordan claims to have a free press. A nation is free only when its cartoonists are free.

Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you!  Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers sink too, and along with them, our Cagle.com site.

 

Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Emad is FREE

Updated 12:00pm 8/30/20: Cagle Cartoonist Emad Hajjaj was freed last night. His case was downgraded from terrorism and the military court to the Amman prosecutor, but he still faces trial and up to two years in prison for “slander and libel” according to an article in the Times of Israel. 

Emad’s home newspaper Al-Araby has an article about Emad’s release and Human Rights Watch director, Joe Stork, “Calling a satirical cartoon a terrorism offence only confirms that Jordan intends to muzzle citizens who speak freely,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at the New York-based watchdog. “This arrest sends the message that Jordanian authorities would rather abuse the rights of their own citizens than risk offending a gulf leader’s feelings,” he added.

Emad’s cartoonist brother, Osama Hajjaj, who we also syndicate, sent me these photos of Emad just after his release.

Quoting from the Times of Israel article: “The decision to release Hajjaj came after the state security court prosecutor decided to change the accusation against him to slander and libel, and his case has been sent back to the Amman state prosecutor,” the judicial source said.

Rakan Saaydeh, the head of the country’s journalists’ union, confirmed the release and the new charges as (they) took custody of Hajjaj from the Balqa jail just northwest of Amman on Sunday.

“He will now appear before the Amman prosecution,” not the state security court, a military tribunal that deals with terrorism-related cases, Saaydeh told reporters.

It was not clear when his trial would begin.”

I’ll post more when I get more. Read more about Emad’s cartoon that got him thrown into prison on my blog.

 

Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you!  Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.

The world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.  We need you! Don’t let the cartoons die!

Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Cagle Cartoonist Emad Hajjaj Arrested, Faces 5 Years in Prison

Update 8/30/20: Emad is freed. He still faces trial and a possible two years in prison for his cartoon. Read more here.

My friend and longtime CagleCartoonist Emad Hajjaj was arrested Wednesday in his home country of Jordan. He is charged with the “cybercrime” of “insulting an Arab country” and faces up to five years in prison for drawing an “offensive” cartoon criticizing Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates. Emad was arrested five hours after posting the cartoon to his newspaper site.

CagleCartoons.com has syndicated Emad’s work to newspapers in America and around the world for the past fifteen years. He is a dear friend of mine and of many of the CagleCartoonists who have partied with Emad on our annual trips to the cartoon festival in St Just le Martel, France.  Emad is the president of the Jordanian Cartoonists Association and cartoonists in Jordan have been protesting Emad’s arrest.

Emad was arrested just five hours after posting the cartoon to his newspaper’s Web site. Emad draws for the Al- Araby newspaper in London which has posted an article about his arrest. (Al-Araby is a longtime subscriber to CagleCartoons.com.)

Emad’s brother Osama Hajjaj, who is also an editorial cartoonist that CagleCartoons.com syndicates, sent me a photo of Emad’s arrest.

Emad’s cartoon depicts UAE leader, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, commonly called “MBZ”, holding an Israeli dove that has spit on his face, with the spittle in the shape of a US F-35 fighter jet and labeled “spit 35” in Arabic. The US recently brokered a treaty between Israel and the UAE, and in a separate but possibly related deal the US agreed to sell advanced F-35 jets to the UAE. Israel is opposing the sale, arguing that Israel’s defense advantage in the region would be compromised if UAE gets the jets. Emad’s drawing shows that Israel has embarrassed MBZ by blocking the sale after UAE agreed to the peace deal

Al-Araby writes that Emad was referred to the “notorious State Security Court” by Amman’s Attorney General. “The SSC – whose judges are appointed by the prime minister – has jurisdiction over crimes including drugs, explosives, weapons, espionage and high treason, however it has increasingly been used to try peaceful protesters and government critics.”

“The country’s infamous 2015 cybercrimes law was widely criticized by rights groups, who say it is a pretext to crack down on any individual who criticizes the government. Amendments added to the law in 2018 also made the distribution of articles considered slanderous punishable with a prison sentence.”

Emad is being held in jail for up to fourteen days, pending the conclusion of an investigation, after that Emad may face charges and a possible five year prison sentence.

UPDATED 8/27/20 1:00pm PDT:  According to a Committee to Protect Journalists article quoting the Center for Defending the Freedom of Journalists director, Nidal Mansour, Emad was brought to the prosecutor’s office today and charged with “disturbing relations with a sister country” under the country’s counter-terrorism law,” “If convicted, Hajjaj could face a minimum of 10 years hard labor, according to 2014 amendments to the counter-terrorism law.” “The public prosecutor’s office ordered Hajjaj to be detained for 14 days and transferred him to Salt Prison, northwest of Amman.”

Read CagleCartoonist David Fitzsimmons’ column about his friend Emad.

The Times of Israel has an excellent article about Emad’s arrest.

This Washington Post article outlines the history hypocrisy of Jordan’s claims to have a free press as they jailed Emad.

Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) has posted an alert on Emad’s arrest.

In the group photo below, Emad is at the right, I’m second from the right and Emad’s cartoonist brother Osama is second from the left. We’re pictured with Mexican cartoonists at CartónClub’s La Linea del Fuego exhibition at the El Universal newspaper in Mexico City a couple of years ago. Emad is friends with cartoonists around the globe and we’ve had a great time traveling together to exotic, cartooning destinations. Since Emad is everyone’s friend in our tight-knit, global community of editorial cartoonists, his arrest comes as a quite a shock in our small world.

Our reader supported site, Cagle.com, still needs you!  Journalism is threatened with the pandemic that has shuttered newspaper advertisers. Some pundits predict that a large percentage of newspapers won’t survive the pandemic economic slump, and as newspapers sink, so do editorial cartoonists who depend on newspapers, and along with them, our Cagle.com site, that our small, sinking syndicate largely supports, along with our fans.

The world needs political cartoonists more now than ever. Please consider supporting Cagle.com and visit Cagle.com/heroes.  We need you! Don’t let the cartoons die!

Please forward this to your friends – tell them our Cagle.com email newsletters are FREE and FUN! Join the newsletter list at Cagle.com/subscribe.

 

 

 

Categories
Blog Syndicate

The Line of Fire

Last week I got back from “The Line of Fire” conference in Mexico City, an editorial cartooning event put on by CartónClub. We’re hoping this will be the first of many annual conferences that CartónClub will be hosting. I’d like to see them succeed – we need more events like this around the world.

I was the only USA cartoonist in the La Linea de Fuego show. A bullet passed through each cartoon about press freedom. Violence against journalists is a big problem in Mexico.

Cagle Cartoons was a co-sponsor of the event and there was a great delegation of Cagle Cartoonists there, including me, Mike Keefe, Monte Wolverton, Gary McCoy, Rick McKee, David Fitzsimmons, Emad Hajjaj, Osama Hajjaj, Arcadio Esquivel, Rayma Suprani and Nerilicon. My buddy, Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro also came. CartónClub’s founder, Angel Boligan and their president, Dario Castillejos are Cagle Cartoonists too.

The event was also co-sponsored by Cartooning for Peace (CFP), which works in Mexico and Canada under the terms of their grant from the EU that funds the organization (notably, the grant excludes the USA). CFP does programs about editorial cartoons in schools and prisons around the world and trains participating cartoonists in how to give these presentations in workshops; they pay an honorarium to the participating cartoonists to keep them going, and giving more lectures. It is a nice program, and the days in Mexico City were filled with these training workshops that didn’t involve much of our Cagle Cartoons delegation, so we spent a lot of time as tourists.

I got the chance to talk to representatives of the EU who support Cartooning for Peace at the conference; it was great to hear how they appreciate our art form – I can’t imagine any editorial cartooning programs like these happening through the United States government.

There was a nice exhibition at the El Universal newspaper lobby called “La Linea de Fuego” (The Line of Fire) where a bullet passed through every cartoon, creating some havoc that had something to do with press freedom. That’s my Statue of Liberty entry in the exhibition above. We had panels and discussions. It was all good.

Here are a couple of photos from our trip. Thanks again to CartónClub and to everyone involved!

Here is a gaggle of cartoonists at the CartónClub conference!

Here’s another group pix with even more cartoonists, at the La Linea de Fuego exhibition …

Want to see more pix? Take a look at my new Instagram feed @daryl.cagle  I’m just starting Instagram and I don’t know what I’m doing there yet! You can also see more on my Facebook page.

Our Cagle Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons wrote a nice piece about the trip here.

Categories
Blog

New Cartoon Brings Death Threats from ISIS/ISIL/DAESH

My cartoonist buddy Osama Hajjaj in Jordan drew a cartoon this week that he describes as depicting Arab women’s struggle and suffering under Islamic/Sharia Law. Osama tells me he’s received a torrent of abusive reaction to the cartoon from Muslim readers, but more of a concern are credible death threats from ISIS/ISIL/DAESH members emanating from Jordan and neighboring Syria. Osama writes:

“… but no matter what, those cowards won’t stop me and I still believe that Freedom of thought and expression is a human right. To detain and threaten people for exercising their human rights is the epitome of barbarism. Blasphemy is a crime for those who have weak ideas and corrupt morals.”

Osama sent me links to some news reports about the ISIL/ISIS/DAESH death threats, like this one, but I must admit, my Arabic is a little rusty. Police in Jordan are investigating. Being an editorial cartoonist in the Middle East is a dangerous job. See more of Osama Hajjaj’s work here.