From the New Yorker:
Kais al-Hilali, a thirty-four-year-old Libyan cartoonist, was shot and killed late last month while painting one of the political street murals for which he was locally famous. According to witnesses, he had just drawn a caricature of Muammar Qaddafi on a wall in Benghazi (above) when the bullet hit.
Several cartoonists from around the world have reacted to the news who have penned their own responses. Check out The New Yorker for a slideshow of cartoon responses.
Along w/ Kurt Westergaard going on trial, this is a big deal. We are truly lucky people to draw, paint say in cartoons what might get other people killed. Freedom’s a powerful drug. Not only would this never happen in America today, there’d be no need.
Yes, cartoonists in the US forget how lucky we are to have the protection of the 1st Amendment. We need to speak out when our colleagues overseas are threatened and attacked for their work. Many thanks to Alan for posting these stories.
Actually, Micheal Stewart was strangled to death by New York City transit cops in the 1980s. While there is some dispute as to whether Stewart was a graff writer, the transit police themselves claimed that they were arresting him for writing on the subway wall with a marker.
A comment at the New Yorker website says that the arabic text to the right of the image above reads “monkey of the monkeys of africa”… Can anyone confirm?
^ Yes, it says so.