Opinion / Noor Amylia Hilda
Joking aside
Graphic artist Fahmi Reza is best known for his satirical illustrations of Malaysian political figures. “To laugh at people in power is how you can overcome fear,” he told me for a feature on comics challenging the status quo in Monocle’s February issue. Now he has once again found himself at the sharp end of the law – this time for a satirical image of Mojo Jojo, the villainous chimpanzee from 1990s cartoon series The Powerpuff Girls, in attire similar to those worn by Malay rulers.
It’s widely believed that the artwork is a riff on a painting by an anonymous artist that depicts Malaysian MPs as primates and frogs, which was recently purchased by the sultan of the Malaysian state of Selangor. The day after Reza (pictured) posted his image he was summoned under the country’s Sedition Act and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act – a law with which he is very familiar, having fallen foul of it several times in the past.
Earlier this month, Reza spent two days under arrest. A double standard seems to be at play: why was the anonymous artist whose work the sultan of Selangor acquired not summoned too? Reza posted a tongue-in-cheek statement on the issue: “If we can accept and not restrict satirical artworks that ‘make a monkey’ out of others, we should also be willing to accept and not restrict satirical artworks that ‘make a monkey’ out of us.” As is often the case with satire, it appears that gags are never as funny when they are at your expense. Meanwhile, the criminalisation of free speech in Malaysia is anything but a laughing matter.
Noor Amylia Hilda is a journalist and Monocle contributor based in Kuala Lumpur.