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VI. Festival Against Censorship honors fD stakeholder ZUNAR with the 2011 “Courage to Fight Censorship” award

Posted on November 10, 2011 | No Comments

BILBAO, Spain. November 10, 2011 –

ZUNAR a.k.a. Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, who has been drawing editorial cartoons for the past 20 years in Malaysia, was awarded the “Courage To Fight Censorship” Award at the VI. Festival Against Censorship.

ZUNAR uses his drawing pen as a weapon to fight state corruption and abuse of power. He has turned the spotlight on local public-interest issues such as the politically explosive (literally!) and unsolved murder of a Mongolian woman, the political conspiracy against the former-deputy-prime-minister- turned-Opposition-Leader Anwar Ibrahim, the domineering wife of the present prime minister, and the shady Scorpene submarine purchases that are now being investigated in France.

He started acquiring a reputation as a critical, no-holds-barred cartoonist during the “Reformation” period in Malaysia. Sparked by the sacking of the then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, which shocked and arrested the nation, the people’s uprising provided him much fodder for ‘comment’ through his cartoons.

Unsurprisingly, the government-controlled national newspapers have blacked-out his cartoons since and he has to resort to publishing them online. On the bright side, no less than the country’s leading source of independent news and views, Malaysiakini.com, is publishing them on a regular basis.

To see video of ZUNAR’s latest exhibition at the VI. Festival Against Censorship visit: http://bit.ly/tYP1Wa