Two Chinese dissidents, including political cartoonist Jiang Yefei, were deported from Thailand back to China last month despite having been granted refugee status by the United Nations. Jiang and fellow pro-democracy activist Dong Guangping were imprisoned upon their return to…
Author: Maren Williams
Indian Graphic Novelist Celebrates Artistic Nudes After Facebook Censorship
One of India’s best-known graphic novelists fell afoul of Facebook’s whimsical moderation regarding artistic nudity last week when the social media giant, acting on an anonymous user report, removed his work which showed a woman getting dressed. Orijit Sen and…
Syrian Cartoonists Inspired by Late Colleague’s Bravery
When Syria’s civil war began in 2011 as an outgrowth of the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region, many citizens were initially optimistic about the outcome, seeing a chance to overthrow the brutal Assad regime. Instead, the instability in…
Custom-Redacted School Texts Make a Worrying Trend
In the past few months we’ve noticed an uptick in a different kind of censorship from what we usually see. Namely, a few schools across the country have assigned their students to read texts that were first edited by hand:…
Zunar in U.S. to Receive CPJ International Press Freedom Award
With his future hinging on a legal challenge to Malaysia’s Sedition Act, cartoonist Zunar is currently in the United States to accept an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists tonight. Last week he and the other…
Algeria’s Tahar Djehiche Sentenced to Prison for Cartoon
In yet another chilling development for cartoonists’ freedom of expression worldwide, an Algerian appeals court this week convicted cartoonist Tahar Djehiche of insulting the country’s president and inciting mob violence via cartoon. He has appealed the verdict to the Supreme…
VICTORY in NJ: Two Books to Remain on High School Reading List
A review committee in Rumson, New Jersey found this week that Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden and Bernard MacLaverty’s novel Cal are appropriate for upper-level high school students and thus should remain on the reading list at Rumson-Fair…
CBLDF Signs on to Protest Ohio Ban of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
For the second time in two months, CBLDF yesterday joined with other organizational members of the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Kids’ Right to Read Project in sending a letter of protest to a school district that banned Jonathan Safran Foer’s…
Another Cartoonist Arrested in Iran
Iranian authorities arrested another cartoonist this week, allegedly to make him serve out a previous sentence imposed two years ago because the state “had a different interpretation of his cartoons than he had,” according to his lawyer. Hadi Heidari previously…
Book Challenge Debates Often Fuelled by Willful Ignorance
Last year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David K. Shipler’s book The Working Poor: Invisible in America was one of seven that were briefly suspended en masse from the school district curriculum in the affluent Dallas enclave of Highland Park. Although the…