It was a warm afternoon in May 2020 when Ahmed Kabir Kishore, dozing lazily, awoke to 20 men breaking down the door of his apartment in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With guns waved in his face, he was dragged to a van outside. “Move away, we have arrested a terrorist,” he heard them shout at the crowds.
Kishore was not a terrorist. He was a cartoonist whose political drawings, published in prominent Bangladesh newspapers and magazines, took a critical view of the alleged corruption, human rights abuses and mishandling of the Covid pandemic by the government, led by prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
