In a recent poll done by Japanese website Goo, Keiji Nakazawa’s semi-autobiographical manga anti-war Barefoot Gen ranked number one as today’s most “traumatizing” manga. The poll asked readers to rank the top 28 manga that left an indelible emotional impression…
Category: International
Hairy Situation: Canadian Website Censors Satirical Essay by Margaret Atwood
Twitter called it #hairgate, but award-winning author Margaret Atwood said it was outright censorship when her column about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hairdo was pulled from the National Post site last month. In what quickly escalated to blitz of…
Neil Gaiman: “Freedom of speech is a hugely important thing.”
“I was really lucky in that my parents definitely didn’t seem to have any kind of rules about what I couldn’t read.” With that, Neil Gaiman — CBLDF Advisory Board co-president and longtime supporter of our fight for the right…
Moroccan Cartoonists Fight for their Right to Free Speech
Morocco is a country abound with cartoonists who are using the art of satire to address a variety of social issues and injustices. But it is also a country with a deep recent history of governmental censorship and oppression. Amidst…
Chinese Censorship Undermines Animation and Comics Industry
Japanese manga promotes juvenile delinquency, violence, and sex — these were some of the reasons that the Chinese Ministry of Culture used to outright ban 38 Japanese manga and anime. But some are beginning to explore whether similar Chinese-produced materials…
Harvard Library Building Archival Collection on Charlie Hebdo Attacks
The Harvard Library is inviting submissions to a new physical and digital archival collection of materials related to the January attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the ensuing worldwide debate on freedom of expression and religion. The curators of…
Japan Censors Artist for Vagina Kayak
In a country that celebrates the male phallus, Japanese artist Rokudenashiko has been charged with the distribution and dissemination of obscene materials and faces up two years in prison and a $20,000 fine for using her own vagina as the…
Zunar Receives Grant Support from Human Rights Watch
As the Malaysian government continues to do everything in its power to prevent Zunar from selling his work openly, Human Rights Watch announced today that it will provide the cartoonist emergency aid in the form of a Hellman/Hammett grant, awarded…
Farghadani to Receive CRNI Courage in Cartooning Award
Iranian artist and activist Atena Farghadani, currently imprisoned for a cartoon she drew depicting members of the country’s Parliament as apes and bovines, has been named as the 2015 winner of Cartoonists Rights Network International’s Courage in Cartooning award. CRNI…
Emerging Arab Comic Artists Face Censorship
London’s Shubbak Festival is a biennial celebration of contemporary Arab culture that spotlights film, music, visual, and more with programming and events. One of the programs included in the 2015 edition of the festival, which took place in July, focused…