One of Fasky’s photographs at sn exhibition showcasing his work during the Récréâtrales festival. In this photo, a young woman is weaving a traditional Burkinabe loincloth. Photo by Joel Hevi, used with permission.
Across Africa, art events serve as powerful platforms for activists seeking to raise awareness about social issues and human rights.
Zerbo Siaka, also known as Fasky, is a photographic artist from Burkina Faso operating at the intersection of artistic expression and activist movements. The artist is also the director of the association Photo’age. Through this association, he is dedicated to passing on his photographic expertise to the next generation. His exhibition at the 13th edition of the cultural festival ‘Les Récréâtrales’ — a pan-African space for writing, creation, research, and theatrical dissemination — exemplifies the positive impact art can have on society.
A long-time participant in this significant gathering, Fasky shared his perspectives with Global Voices during Les Récréâtrales, explaining how he uses his photography as a tool to foster resilience and encourage social engagement.
Fasky. Photo by Joel Hevi, used with permission.
Joel Hevi (JH): Could you tell us about what inspired your journey into photography and your role within the Photo’Age association?
Fasky (F): I am Zerbo Siaka, also known as Fasky, a photographer from Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. My journey into photography happened by chance. Initially, I aspired to be a rapper, but my path changed when I discovered photography while accompanying some French friends who were part of an association in Burkina Faso. They gifted me a camera, and that’s when photography became my passion. Today, through Photo’Age, I share this art with the younger generation, including internally displaced children, helping them to express themselves and showcase their realities.
JH: You presented a series of portraits of women at Les Récréâtrales. What message are you hoping to share through these woman-centric pieces?
F: For four years now, I have taken part in Les Récréâtrales. During this time, I have been fortunate to build strong connections with the women I photograph, most of whom are internally displaced [due to the widespread violence caused by terrorist attacks]. The theme of my exhibition, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ reflects their resilience in the face of crisis. These are women who, despite everything, hold on to hope and fight for their dignity. Through their portraits, I invite visitors to witness their strength and vulnerability. My hope is that beyond their faces, one can see a moving and inspiring humanity.
JH: Do you hope to initiate a dialogue about gender equality? What potential impacts could arise beyond the aesthetic appeal of your work?
F: Definitely, photography is for me a political and social act. These portraits are a statement advocating for gender equality and a tribute to these strong women and their struggles. I hope to raise awareness, to showcase their strength, and to emphasize the urgency of achieving equality. If my photographs can spark a debate and motivate others to stand up for these women’s rights, they will have achieved their goal.
JH: Your photographic style conveys an intimate connection with your subjects. How do you manage to establish this trust, especially in often challenging situations?
F: Trust is at the heart of my work. The women I photograph know me; we have built relationships over time. The Terre Ceinte project allowed me to understand their lives and earn their trust. Before taking their pictures, I listen and respect their stories. This bond is reflected in their expressions in my photos — a sincerity that only patience and attentive listening can bring to life.
36-year-old Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Afro-Cuban self-taught artist. He comes from a poor and marginalized neighbourhood in Havana and uses sculptural and performance art to protest violations against freedom of expression. He has been arrested multiple times for his art and activism and is currently in prison.
Otero Alcántara is the general coordinator of the San Isidro Movement – a constellation of artists, journalists and academics promoting freedom of expression. It was established in 2018 as a reaction to Decree 349. The decree requires artists to obtain advance permission for public and private exhibitions and performances. Decree 349 is one of the legal instruments used to silence artists, musicians and performers who are critical to the Cuban government.
Otero Alcántara’s artivism has come at a high personal cost. Since 2016 he has been the subject of interrogations, political persecution and arrests, and his art has been confiscated and destroyed by state security officers.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara creates sculptures, drawings, and performative art. He is currently serving a five-year sentence in the high-security prison Guanajay outside of Havana.
Expressing oneself through art: A basic human right
Despite this, he continued his artivism through performance pieces to raise awareness of Cuba’s ongoing repression of independent artists and activists. Otero Alcántara was detained on July 11, 2021, after posting a video online of his planned participation in the protests. In 2022, he was convicted for “contempt, public disorder and insults to national symbols”. He is currently serving a five-year sentence in Guanajay maximum security prison outside Havana.
The Rafto prize 2024 aims to highlight the importance of the work of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and the basic human right to expressing oneself through art. We call upon the Cuban government to stop the persecution of artists and human rights defenders. We also urge them to free Otero Alcántara and all political prisoners in Cuba.
Sara Nabil is a human rights defender and artist from Afghanistan, forced into exile. She spoke to ISHR about her dream of one day seeing a ‘free democratic Afghanistan, where each human being [regardless of which] gender they are, man or woman, neutral or other genders, [would be] treated equally.’
‘Since the Taliban came to power, Afghanistan [has become] the only country where we see that women don’t have any kind of rights.’
“The idea is not to change the world, but to spark the mind that will change the world, because leadership is in delegation.”
Willie Oeba is an African poet who empowers young people to fight inequality and foster social justice through spoken word. He currently leads a team of 24 young “artivists” in his community who use their creativity to create social change. Through his own poems, he has also reached millions of people worldwide.
As CEO of ISM Academy, an organization that trains young leaders to create art that combats inequality, Willie develops the tools for marginalized artists to champion social justice, economic equity, and democracy. In 2021, he was awarded the Upcoming Human Rights Defender award by the Defenders Coalition, a national human rights organization in Kenya. He also won the East Africa Spoken Word Battle in 2018.
Willie works to bridge the poverty gap within the arts by empowering artists from marginalized communities and by championing economic structures that allow artists from every background to achieve financial independence. He believes that activism through art requires people to stand in the gap between what is real and what is possible, and to respond to challenges by expanding whose stories get told.
Billy Porter is an American actor and singer, who first gained notice performing on Broadway before embarking on a solo career. He is a Grammy, Emmy and two-time Tony Award winner. He is a trailblazer in especially in the LGBTQI+ community including being first openly gay Black man to win an Emmy award. His performance of Audacity at the Royal Albert Hall in London was a world exclusive performance for the Human Rights 75 Concert on 10 December, 2023 in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. #HumanRights75 and #act4rightsnow
NOGs (such as Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Foundation) have condemned the arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen, as well as the lawyer Joseph Zen, the singer Denise Ho and the scholar Hui Po-Keung, for having maintained contacts with foreign forces in Hong Kong.
HRW Senior China researcher Maya Wang, said that “the arrest of a 90-year-old cardinal is the latest example of the city’s human rights freefall in recent years.”
The four, along with former lawmaker Cyd Ho, who is already in jail, were part of the 612 Humanitarian Aid Fund, which provided medical, legal and psychological help to protesters arrested during the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Kong.
Denise Ho, Margaret Ng, and others affiliated with Stand News, an independent pro-democracy online publication, were previously arrested by national security police in December 2021 under allegations of publishing “seditious” and “inflammatory” materials. Denise Ho formerly served on the board of Stand News, but stepped down in November 2021. Meanwhile, the 612 Humanitarian Support Fund ceased operations in October 2021 after national security police and Chinese state-backed media requested information on its beneficiaries and donors.
Maya Wang has specified that Hong Kong has “long been a regional leader in openness and respect for the rule of law, but now competes for the first places in Asia for repression and political prisoners.”
“The people of Hong Kong have been unequivocal in their demand for human rights, and governments around the world should be unequivocal in their response to that call,” concluded the HRW researcher.
To mark the UN Refugee Agency’s 70th anniversary, award-winning cartoonist Hani Abbas has created seven images that will be sold as digital assets to raise funds for Afghanistan.
Syrian-Palestinian cartoonist Hani Abbas, 44, was born and grew up in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus. From the late 1990s his cartoons appeared in publications and exhibitions in Syria and across the Middle East, before he and his family fled the conflict in 2012 and eventually settled in Switzerland as refugees.
Since then, Abbas’s work – which tackles themes of injustice, loss, and the human cost of conflict – has featured in publications including Le Temps and La Liberté in Switzerland and France’s Le Monde. He is also a member of the Cartooning for Peace organization, a network of press cartoonists committed to promoting freedom and democracy. In 2014, Abbas received the International Editorial Cartoon Prize in Geneva. [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/01DCF77A-3DEA-97F4-CE95-6BD185538207]
To mark the 70th anniversary of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Abbas has teamed up with national partner association Switzerland for UNHCR to launch the agency’s first-ever NFT (non-fungible token) fundraising sale. Abbas has created seven cartoons, from which ten copies of each will be converted into unique digital assets and sold as NFTs on the OpenSea online marketplace to raise funds for UNHCR’s Afghanistan crisis response.
Ahead of the start of the sale on 4 November, UNHCR spoke with Abbas and asked him about his life in Syria, his experiences as a refugee, and the meaning behind the images he has created.
What was your early life like growing up in Yarmouk camp?
Yarmouk is called a camp, but it’s really a part of the city with buildings, streets, and all the normal services. Growing up there was something nice and something hard. A lot of people in a small area; many pupils in the school. We had a beautiful, funny life – hard, but beautiful. Sometimes hard memories become nice when you look back. When I remember it now, I have nostalgia about that time. I remember my friends, my neighbourhood, my street, my family home.
When did you first show a talent for drawing?
When I was a child, I loved to draw. I drew everything, and I drew on everything – I was drawing on the walls, in school textbooks, on my body – everywhere. This is a child’s job! I loved drawing and when I was in school, my art teacher supported me and entered my work in a UN children’s drawing prize which I won twice, when I was 13 and 14. Those prizes gave me the power and the belief to continue drawing – I felt like I had something to say through my drawing. You can explain your story, your feelings, your ideas.
Did you always want to be a cartoonist?
No. At first it was anything, but when I was around 18, I started thinking about cartoons because I saw a lot in the newspapers, and on the walls of the camp. The walls were like our newspaper in the camp. Yarmouk was one big newspaper. In 1998 I published my first cartoon in a Palestinian magazine, then had exhibitions in the camp, in Damascus, Aleppo and Lebanon. I started connecting with newspapers – that’s how it goes. At the same time, I was also a teacher in an elementary school in Damascus.
What themes do you address in your cartoons?
My early cartoons were about Palestine, Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. More political than funny because it was difficult for me to draw something funny. I always go towards tragedy and darkness because I draw what I’m feeling. I’m trying to explain about myself and my people. At that time, I was just drawing and there was no problem for me, but when the conflict started, you had to take your life in your hands when you drew.
I’m still drawing now. Drawing in a safe place like Switzerland is good, you have total freedom. But you lose the sense of danger, the challenge. For me I did my best drawings under the bombs. I lost a big part of my power when I left Syria, but I still have the power of memory.
“The memories occupy my mind all the time.”
How did the conflict affect you personally?
I moved many times in Syria starting from March 2011 until December 2012 when I left. The last six months were very difficult to live under the bombs all the time. At that time, we would hear three sounds. The first was the sound of the shell when it was launched. The second was the sound of the shell above us in the sky. The third sound was the sound the of the explosion on the ground, or in a building. I was drawing all the time, but when I heard that first sound, I would lift my pencil and wait, thinking: ‘maybe this is my last drawing’. If I heard the third sound, that meant I was still alive. I’m lucky because I always heard all three sounds, but many thousands of Syrian people around me never heard the third sound.
You managed to escape Syria, first to Lebanon and then Switzerland. How did your life change?
Before, my family was all in the same place, now everyone is spread around the world. I’m here in Switzerland, in Geneva, my brother is in Cologne in Germany, my parents and two other brothers are in Sweden, and another brother is in Madrid, in Spain. It’s not easy to connect with them. It’s good we have social media and video calls, but it’s not the same. My kids are speaking French now, my brother’s kids are speaking German, Swedish, another Spanish. When they meet now it’s not easy to connect with so many languages, different cultures, different educations. We will lose our family tree. The branches have been cut off and are drifting down the river in different directions. But Switzerland is very good for my kids, without any problems and without any bad memories, without any dangers in the future. For me, it’s okay. I’m working here, I’m still drawing, I’m feeling good – life is good – but the memories occupy my mind all the time.
The images you’ve created for the NFT sale are part of a series you call “Windows”. What significance do windows have in your work?
What is the meaning of windows in my heart? They are our windows to see the country, to see people – to connect with them and hear them. In 2011, after four months of the conflict I drew the first window – a destroyed building with just a window still standing, and a young man waiting outside with a flower to see his love, who was gone. It represents what we’ve lost. I’ve drawn other figures who have left everything else behind but take a window with them, because the window is their memory. I have my own ideas and feelings about the images, but I hope everyone who looks at them can see the effect of war on people.
“I hope all the people who have problems in their countries can get out.”
The money raised in the sale will be used to support the people of Afghanistan. How did you feel watching recent events there?
It felt familiar for me because we were – we’re still – like them. The same problems, the same feelings, the same stories. In the news we always heard about the politics, but we didn’t know what was happening to normal people. For me, I hope all the people who have problems in their countries can get out. I support people who want to get out if they have dreams, if they want to protect their kids.
You’re used to publishing your cartoons in newspapers. How do you feel about them being turned into unique digital assets and sold as NFTs instead?
I don’t have any experience of this – I just do the drawings! But every cartoonist wants their work to be seen, and I support these new ideas. Anything that will help people and explain the hard conditions and problems they face, and allow other people to support them. It’s a new idea, and when I heard about it, I loved it. We hope now it succeeds in focusing attention on the problems of [Afghans], and makes money for them of course, because they need it. Sometimes, to make a little bit of change in people’s lives they just need a tent or a little bit of food, a bit of support or a little education.
The Normandy Freedom Prize invites young people aged 15 to 25 in France and around the world, to reward each year a person or an organization engaged in an exemplary fight in favour of freedom. The online vote open to 15-25 year olds around the world to elect the 2021 Freedom Prize closed on April 26. Sonita Alizadeh, 25 years old, rapper born in Afghanistan, was named the laureate of this third edition of the Freedom Prize thanks to the votes of more than 5,000 young people from all over the world. For more on this award and its laureates see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/fef9ddd0-5b73-11e9-aba0-2ddd74eff7fa
Sonita Alizadeh is a rapper who was born in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. At the age of 9, her parents planned to sell her as a bride but because of the war, her family fled to Iran and the planned marriage fell through. In Teheran, an NGO provided her with access to education and a cleaning job. When Sonita stumbled upon a song by the rapper Eminem, it is a real breakthrough. She began writing to tell her story and to speak out against forced marriage and the plight of millions of children around the world. Her first single, “Brides for Sale” garnered worldwide attention. Having moved to the United States, she now studies law to become a lawyer and to return to her country to defend Afghan women and children.
“I am proud to accompany the youth jury for the Prix Liberté. It is essential to sensitize the young generation to the defense of freedoms whatever they may be and to involve them in the construction of equality and the rights of every woman and man in the world. This requires awareness and teaching of what is happening elsewhere but also in France. Young people need to be heard because they are just like adults, victims of suffering and indifference.”
On 13 January 2021) the Human Rights Foundation announced the opening of “In Pursuit of Freedom,” a digital art exhibit featuring 15 protest movements from around the globe. Street protests were a defining feature of recent civil and political resistance despite the spread of the novel coronavirus worldwide. Authoritarian regimes were exposed for using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for repression, stricter restrictions, and power grabs instead of protecting their citizens’ lives. Nevertheless, people took the streets to make their voices heard, and as they adapted to champion social and political change in the face of the outbreak, art was a vigorous medium of protest and creative expression to expose the deception of tyranny. “In Pursuit of Freedom: A Year in Global Protest Art” showcases moving examples of protest art from 15 countries across regions, and attests to how art can be a powerful tool for activism and protest. From Belarus to Hong Kong, visit the exhibit to see striking works of protest art by artists who committed their talent in 2020 to push for change across 15 countries ruled by authoritarian regimes.
In 6 August, 2020 HRF’s President sent a letter to the American hip hop artist Tyga pointing out that his performance is part of a plan to distract from the electoral fraud in the imminent election and prevent protesters from gathering at opposition rallies. The concert is organized and funded by the Belarusian dictatorship, led by Alexander Lukashenko. Under this regime, there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, and no freedom of association.
“This performance, scheduled for the day before Belarus’ elections, is no coincidence. It is an excuse to cancel the opposition’s final electoral rally, and prevent ordinary Belarusians from showing their support for freedom and democracy,” said HRF president Thor Halvorssen. “It is also a deliberate attempt to turn attention away from the massive electoral fraud that is already taking place across the country.” Belarus’ elections, which haven’t been free or fair since 1994, have been met with extreme repression. As HRF recounted in its letter to the performer: “Protestors are grabbed off the street at random, and many are beaten bloody. The two most popular candidates in the upcoming presidential election, Viktor Babryka and Sergei Tikhanouvsky, were both arrested on trumped up charges. Many opposition activists have had to flee the country, along with their children, after receiving threats from the government.” “Tyga has been an outspoken advocate of the Black Lives Matter movement. He has urged followers to vote in local elections and take to the streets in protest. His support for Lukashenko’s regime will greatly undermine the activism he has encouraged in the United States,and provide the Belarusian dictator a useful propaganda stunt,” said Halvorssen. “We hope he will stand on the side of the people of Belarus as opposed to their oppressor. He must decline the invitation to perform for the dictator.” HRF requested that Tyga cancel his concert and use this media opportunity to send an urgent and categorical message of encouraging support to protestors in Belarus.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 