Posts Tagged ‘humor’

Ecuador’s “Bonil” continues to cartoon for freedom in spite of threats

June 26, 2017

On 20 June 2017, the Human Rights Foundation published the above video from its May Oslo Freedom Forum. It is an unusual day when anyone receives a personal phone call from their country’s president; it is especially unusual if that call is a veiled threat against a cartoonist. Xavier “Bonil” Bonilla pushes the boundaries through his cartooning in Ecuador, a country where journalists, cartoonists, and supporters of freedom of expression are deemed enemies of the state. Though he has been personally attacked by President Rafael Correa for his efforts, Bonil continues to denounce Ecuador’s slide into competitive authoritarianism and reminds us that humor is an incredibly effective tool against dictators.
see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2016/02/27/alarming-criminalisation-of-human-rights-defenders-in-latin-america/

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Rayma Suprani, female cartoonist from Venezuela, fired for mocking Chávez

June 3, 2015

Rayma Suprani, one of the few female cartoonists in Venezuela, spoke at the  2015 Oslo Freedom Forum on 26 May about the role that humor plays in resisting tyranny, and how cartoons are the thermometers by which we measure freedom. She believes that critical drawings are crucial to testing the strengths of a democracy. Suprani worked at El Universal, one of Venezuela’s largest newspapers, for 19 years before she was fired last year after publishing a cartoon that mocked the legacy of Hugo Chávez and the state of the Venezuelan health care system. She remains defiant, and reminds us that humor is the key to ending repression: we should teach our children to wield pens, not guns.

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Humor as weapon in the human rights arsenal

January 14, 2013

From  Monday 14 – Friday 18 January 2013 Tactical Dialogue and New Tactics in Human Rights are organizing again an on-line conversation on Using Humor to Expose the Ridiculous.

All over the world, human rights activists use humour, irony, satire, parody and lampooning to express dissent and challenge the absurdities of institutional power.

They expose the lies, deceptions and sheer absurdities in their speech.

However, this is not without risks, which are particularly high in times of political turmoil.

So how exactly do activists in different parts of the world use humor to take on institutional power? How do they choose their tactics? What are the challenges they face in their work? And how do they overcome them? This online conversation will be an opportunity to exchange experiences, lessons-learned and ideas among practitioners using humor to challenge regimes and societies, and provoke citizens to reevaluate the way they think, and sometimes even push them to join them in their campaigns.

A few years ago, the same organizations hosted a conversation on a topic similar to this month’s conversation. It was called “Tactical that Tickle: Laughing all the way to the win”. Lessons from that exercise are available on-line via:

Using Humor to Expose the Ridiculous | New Tactics in Human Rights.

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