Yesterday on Facebook, Tarique Rahman, Acting Chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP, announced that freedom of political expression has been restored after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country.
I am deeply gratified that the freedom to draw political cartoons has been restored in Bangladesh. Before 2006, Bangladeshi cartoonists, especially Shishir Bhattacharjee, often created cartoons about my mother and me. However, over the past 15 years, we have seen cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore being subjected to enforced disappearance, enduring unimaginable torture and imprisonment for his work. Many others have faced similar repression. Shishir Bhattacharjee eventually stopped creating cartoons altogether. I am a fan of cartoonist Mehedi, and I used to enjoy Shishir Bhattacharjee’s work as well. I sincerely hope that he will soon start creating political cartoons regularly once again.
During the Sheikh Hasina administration, the country passed the Digital Security Act in 2018 which was used to arrest and target journalists, cartoonists, and writers critical of the government. In Rahman’s post he mentioned cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore who was detained in May of 2020 and tortured. He was released in March 2021.
It should be noted, Rahman’s enthusiasm may not be completely as a fan of Bangladesh cartoonists, but he is also publisher of the daily paper Dainik Dinkal, whose paper was closed in 2022 under the Digital Security Act.