Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart, who was recently sentenced to prison for supporting "terrorism", received the International Sketch Award on Thursday.
The award is given every two years since 2012, when it was created by the Swiss organization Cartooning for Peace and the City of Geneva to "courageous press cartoonists" who are in danger because of of their art ”.
This year, the committee "chose Musa Kart, the iconic cartoonist of the Istanbul daily Cumhuriyet, for his talent and courage in defending freedom of expression and artistic creation," the organizers said in a statement. in publicity.
Kart could not personally go to Switzerland to receive his award, as he is a prisoner awaiting appeal, "under judicial control and a ban on leaving Turkey," the statement said.
Openly hostile to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Cumhuriyet ("Democracy"), founded in 1924, has repeatedly angered the powerful Turkish man over its caustic cover-up.
Like fourteen of his colleagues in Cumhuriyet, Kart was sentenced on April 26, after a nine-month trial, to prison for supporting "terrorist organizations", a verdict that the newspaper described as simply "shameful". "Heavy blow" to the free press in Turkey.
A Silivri court near Istanbul has sentenced Kart to three years and nine months in prison, according to a statement from Cartooning for Peace and the city of Geneva.
The award committee consists of a representative of the City of Geneva, Guillaume Barazon, the director of the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, and the cartoonists Plantu (Le Monde), Le New Monde, Chapp York Times, Neue Zurcher Zeitung) and Lisa Donnelly (The New Yorker).