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| Wang Liming, pictured in 2013, says he fears he will be arrested if he returns to China. |
When
calls for Wang Liming to be arrested were made on a forum hosted by China's
state-controlled press last year, the satirical cartoonist who lampooned the
Communist Party leadership decided it would be safer to stay in Japan, where he
had been traveling. But while he may have avoided possible arrest, the
cartoonist, known as Rebel Pepper, says he is struggling to make a living in
his self-imposed exile.
"Maybe the [Communist] Party wants
to admonish people one by one as examples," Wang said in a public appeal for support this month, after
exhausting his savings over the past year. "If they don't throw you in
jail, they'll make it impossible for you to live."
Wang's experiences of falling foul of
the authority figures featured in his satirical work mirror those of other
political cartoonists around the world. Earlier this month, CPJ released its
special report, "Drawing the Line: Cartoonists Under
Threat," which highlights how globally cartoonists are being
imprisoned, forced into hiding, threatened with legal action, or killed.
As his nickname "Rebel Pepper"
suggests, Wang's sharp, satirical cartoons may not have been palatable to
everyone, including China's Communist Party. The cartoonist frequently used his
drawings to skewer the Chinese
leadership and their authoritarianism as
well as to call attention to events such as last year's pro-Beijing
rally in Hong Kong, organized by a group sympathetic to Beijing.
While
visiting Japan in May last year, Wang was labelled a pro-Japanese traitor for
his cartoons, in a post that called for his arrest. The post, written under a
pseudonym, appeared on an online forum hosted by the state-controlled People's
Daily website and was
republished by several other Chinese news sites, according to reports.
"I wonder why [I have to be called]
a traitor for conveying thoughts on Japan as I felt," Wang said in an interview.
"We're not allowed even to make a joke about the government and
bureaucrats. I'm pessimistic about the future of China."
Wang said he also began receiving death
threats via email, according to news accounts.
Fearing he would face arrest upon returning
home, Wang decided to stay put. His anxiety is not unwarranted. The cartoonist
was detained in October 2013 over a microblog he had forwarded, which
authorities said "was a rumor," and in 2011 he was interrogated by
security officers over a cartoon titled "One person, one vote to change
China," according to news reports.
Moreover, China's clampdown on criticism has become ever more stifling. The
country is currently the leading jailer of journalists, with 44 imprisoned
according to CPJ's latest prison census.
But Wang's decision to remain in Japan
has led to another set of challenges. The cartoonist, who had hundreds of
thousands of followers on social media before his accounts were deleted on
sites including Sina Weibo and Tencent, is now struggling to make a living.
Last year, Taobao, an online shopping portal owned by Alibaba--China's biggest
e-commerce company--closed Rebel Pepper's Little Shop through which the
cartoonist supported himself, reports said. Alibaba has not publicly commented
on why the online store was closed.
Selling the occasional cartoon to
Japanese publications and his position as a visiting scholar at a Japanese
university, which offers no stipend, are not enough to keep him afloat, he told
the Christian
Science Monitor this
week. Wang added that so far, he and his wife have not been able to apply for
political asylum in Japan. The pair have "cultural exchange" visas
that are set to expire at the year's end, the report said.
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