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MESSAGES from
Cartoonists Rightd Network Bulgaria
From: savkov@hotmail.com
To: posta@cumhuriyet.com.tr; tanoral@ttmail.com
Subject: Bulgarian cartoonists' raction
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008
Dear Sirs,
It has been a bad and negative surprise to Bulgarian cartoonists when learning
about the firing of our colleague Tan Oral.
We have known Tan for quite a long time as a very talented artist drawing
humour in a subtle and his own unique style. We keep a warm and cheerful
memory of our meetings with him.
On the basis of our respect and sympathy towards Tan Oral Bulgarian
cartoonists strongly protest against his firing from Cumhuriyet newspaper.
We declare our united solidarity abd support to him.
The details of his case indicate that he has been merely cheated and taken
advantage of.
We hope that Tan shall be restored to his job as editorial cartoonist at
Cumhuriyet.
Respectfully,
Ilian Savkov,
President of Cartoonists
Rights Network Bulgaria
May, 2007
/Regarding the problems caused by publishing cartoons of prophet Mohamed
I’m sending you three short interviews of our famous cartoonists
concerning that matter. They were published in the dayly newspapers
Politika, together with the opinions of certain politicians, psyhologists,
priests etc.
Jugoslav Vlahovic (editorial comment: "unrestands both sides"): "Playing
about with the religious beliefs is very tricky. One Turkish cartoonists
was even imprisoned because of the work of this type, athough Turks have
very respectable cartoon scene. In Iran there also are good and succesfull
cartoonists, but the religion remains the taboo and, to the best of my
knowledge, nobody treated this topic in a frivolous way. Prophet Mohamed’s
cartoon really goes beyond the freedom of the "artists’ world view". Maybe
we should realize that, as the cartoonists, we are artists, not
politicians.
From the proffesional point of view, I support destroying of all taboos,
including the religious ones. But in the same time, Koraks is probably
right when says that nobody should play about with the religious beliefs
of the others. We learned what concecvenses it can cause. Such a turbulent
reactions of fanatical Moslems, im my opinion, reflects the anger caused
by the range of events from the recent past.
Earlier there were lot of cartoons regarding Serbs. Famous cartoonists of
Le monde drawn Serbs as pigs and nobody reacted. Especially not in the
terms of legal procedures. I don’t know - maybe our acting is too
tolerant.
Dusan Ludvig (editorial comment: in his opinion "the cartoon is direct
political provocation"): "Politics shouldn’t interfere so strongly the
field of religion. All comments, however, sholuld be given with certain
sustain and nobody should make the opinion too quickly and easily. In the
cartoon history this isn’ the first case of publishing the cartoon with
questionable topic, but they weren’t treated like this since the political
situation was different. These days, I’m not sure whether would I dare to
draw such a cartoon. It isn’t that public opinion changed, but that it
depends of political impacts. I don’t aprove of the attitude od Denish
cartoonists, but in Europe reaction wasn’t so turbulent. If you are
underlining samething constantly and making in the central world’s issue,
the reactions must be loud and violent.
Koraks: "It’s normal for other media to report about the controversal
cartoon that caused the outburst of islamic anger. When the cartoon was
published by the first newspapers, the box was already open. In islamic
world prophet Mohamed saint and god and making fun of anybody’s religious
feelings isn’t recommendable. Artists and cartoonists in their works can
picture political leaders. Western culture, however, is different and
certainly more wide. In this culture is possible to make fun of the pope
or priests and in our world that won’t cause some serious repercutions.
Islam is different, and that must be respected.
Something similar happened to me. Once earlier for the weekly magazine
Vreme I made sketches for the calendar with a cartoon which main figure
was Slobodan Milosevic surrounded by Hitler, Gadafi, Homeini, Sadam,
Lucifer. After it was published, the embassy of Iran protested and the
editorial board had to apologigize to moslem population.
In my opinion, cartoon shouldn’t be insulting in national or religious
way. Cartoonists shouldn’t make fun of the others, but of themselves. "
Ilian Savkov
President of CRN Bulgaria |
From CRN Correspondent in Bulgaria.
Ilian Savkov.
Sofia, May 2007
Since January 1st , 2007, Bulgaria has been a member of the European Union.
Along with the country’s NATO membership this is the great achievements as
well as acknowledgments for the successful completion of Bulgaria’s painful
and winding transition from totalitarian society to democracy that was
triggered in 1989. (by the collapse of the Soviet empire?)
Presently Bulgarian central newspapers work with editorial cartoonists on a
daily basis and political cartoons have become an element of their profile.
We should mention that big newspapers are owned by big corporate entities and
certainly this is a frame and may be matrix. And yet Bulgarian media manage to
stand for freedom of speech and to be critical and open. I would dare say so
are editorial cartoons that appear in them
In fact freedom of speech in Bulgaria has been a factor since the early
transitional years.
It took more time to get to pluralism and quality of editorial cartoons.
Leading politicians, big businessmen and representatives of the legal and law
enforcement system are the favorite targets of editorial cartoons. All these
people are in a way that “bad company” bringing to the very big corruption on
very high level and the elaborate network of organized crime widespread
around. There has been the long list of unsolved murders of top standing men
in politics, business and contraband (smuggling). That sort of weird
connection between people who must be on the opposite side of the barricade is
a sort of “public secret” here. As a result a suspicion arises for some sort
of romance between legitimacy and crime. Surely it will take long time that
tangled post-communist knot to be undone and editorial cartoons focus on that
sore item everyday.
The good thing is that there have been so far no threats or persecutions on
cartoonists for their work.
In order to illustrate my sayings I would offer several cartoons by Tchavdar
Nikolovwho is editorial cartoonist of “Novinar” Daily. I’m limited to only
this option because that newspaper and “Standart” Daily publish editorial
cartoons on their web versions and access to them is free:
http://www.novinar.bg/?act=news&act1=mnenia&mater=MjE5MTs3NQ
Ilian Savkov
President of CRN Bulgaria
May 11, 2007
Sofia Bulgaria
CRN Eastern Europe leader in Bulgaria, Ilian Savkov, sends us this link to
an article about another unsolved murder in Bulgaria and the cartoon he
drew about it. (Click on
LINK)
Curiously, in Bulgaria, politically and economically motivates and
engendered murders take place with impunity. Yet Savkov reports a rather
free and lively press, especially for cartoonists. He deals with impunity
issues regularly and does not report much in the way of either editorial
or external warnings or rejections.
Robert Russell
CRNI
Burke, VA |
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 9:53 PM
Subject: Ilian Savkov on line
Dear Bro,
Bulgaria is hopefully on the brink of her European Union accession. The expected
date of acceptance is January 1, 2007, unless the government and the network of
structures running the country let some major blunder or failure happens here.
In that sense i wouldn't say there is sometning like rather tight control let
alone any institutional harassment on art expression.
The basic problems for Bulgaria remain economic ones- i would say it's that
ongoing for about two decades economic terror. According to all official
statistics Bulgaria is the poorest candidate for EU membership where the very
limited network of immensely rich people live along with the vast majority of
truly poor population. That is the cause of widespread corruption and weak state
institutions.
There were some minor incidents in the spectrum of religious tolerance such as
putting a mosque in a small BG town on fire but these were quickly processed by
the law enforcement units finding the hooligans stinding behind such acts.
Ilian Savkov
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