Aseem Trivedi
Assem Trivedi was chosen as co-recipient of 2012 Courage Award for launching Cartoons Against Corruption, an anit-corruption campaign to mobilize his fellow citizens against India’s pervasive political corruption, and for assuming a leadership role in India’s emerging free speech movement.
Aseem Trivedi is an Indian cartoonist and human rights defender. He played a leading role in India's 2010 anti-corruption movement with his "Cartoons Against Corruption" series, for which the government suspended Aseem's website and charged him with sedition, breaching the IT act, and "insulting" national symbols.
After spending three days in prison, Aseem launched the Save Your Voice campaign against the IT rules used to target him and other activists, and went on hunger-strike demanding they be repealed.
In 2015, following years of peaceful activism, India's Supreme Court struck down the IT rules Aseem was once imprisoned under. Later that year, he created a comic magazine dedicated to telling the stories of human rights defenders at risk around the world. Today, while the sedition and IT charges against Aseem have been dropped, he still faces up to three years in prison for "insulting" the government through his art.
Human rights defenders in India face a diverse range of attacks and harassment for their wor defending the rights of others, including killings, torture, ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, smear campaigns, and judicial harassment.
