A Malaysian designer’s caricature of the scandal-plagued prime minister as a sinister clown has gone viral, sparking a wider protest movement through the photographs and making the artist a goal of authorities.
Prime Minister Najib Razak’s parodies have quickly develop into essentially the most controversial images in Malaysia, drawing designer and activist Fahmi Reza to be in comparison with street art provocateurs equivalent to Banksy.
Widely shared on social media, they sparked imitations and attracted the eye of Malaysians outraged by the corruption allegations against Najib and his actions to thwart investigations.
Malaysian “motorcycle thieves” supporting Najib attack Mahathir’s office
“Our country is run by fools and crooks,” Fahmi, a punk rock fan, said in an e-mail interview during an prolonged trip abroad.
commercial
commercial
He tries to “point out the hypocrisy [of Malaysian politics]to draw attention to these absurdities and make people laugh at them.”
However, Malaysian authorities will not be amused.
Fahmi, 38, who was previously arrested for his activities, was questioned by police and told to stop publishing photos that show Najib in powder-white clown makeup, with ominously arched eyebrows and shiny, blood-red lips.
He said police were investigating possible breaches of multimedia laws, that are punishable by five years in prison.
Last yr, a Malaysian political cartoonist known for denigrating the federal government was hit with multiple sedition charges, which lawyers said could carry a sentence of as much as 43 years in prison.
Fahmi, who calls art his “weapon”, stays fearless.
“They can imprison a rebel, but they cannot imprison a rebel,” he said.
Najib is fighting accusations of stealing billions of dollars from a state-owned company he controls and is under pressure over accepting a mysterious foreign payment of $681 million.
He denies accusations that the massive payment was constructed from a fund that’s now in trouble, but has stoked anger by limiting investigations, clearing government critics over the scandal and suppressing media coverage of it.
Allegations of a cover-up intensified in January when Najib’s elected attorney general abruptly absolved him of any charges related to accepting the massive sum.
Shortly thereafter, Fahmi – already angered by a spate of sedition allegations against government critics in recent times – began circulating his clown caricatures on Malaysia’s hyperactive social media.
The images and copies of them are widely shared online, and posters and stickers have begun appearing on public partitions, which authorities quickly remove.
The guerrilla campaign highlighted the emergence of social media as a political battleground.
With mainstream media controlled by the long-ruling government, the opposition has leveraged the Internet for a series of recent electoral successes, benefiting from the assistance of a brand new generation of voters.
Authorities promised years ago to not censor the Internet, but have shown increasing concern, recently making a police unit to scour cyberspace for “subversive” content.
The government has also tried to make use of the web to its advantage, but has faced scorn for the recent #RespectMyPM campaign, which was brutally criticized by Twitter users, with trolls changing it to #SuspectMyPM.
Fahmi, a Muslim, creates an unlikely avant-garde figure in Muslim-majority Malaysia in his all-black ensemble of jacket, jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, shoulder-length hair and beret.
He was trained within the US as an electrical engineer and his art is basically self-taught.
He cites the Atelier Populaire movement as his predominant inspiration, producing powerful posters in the course of the 1968 strikes and demonstrations that swept France, and punk rock provides his soundtrack for his work.
Twitter humiliation for Malaysia’s Najib Razak as ‘RespectMyPM’ becomes ‘SuspectMyPM’
Fahmi emphasizes that his work tends to distort not only Najib but all sides of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic politics, where an entrenched ethnic Malay ruling elite seeks to fend off a recalcitrant transracial opposition promising to finish monetary policy and democratic abuses.
Condemning “childish” arguments and racist taunts, Fahmi is perversely pleased with the movement he has began.
“When people become bolder to stand up and challenge injustice and corruption, it undermines the power structure that keeps people submissive,” he said.
