{"id":353475,"date":"2018-03-23T10:22:53","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T09:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/three-years-for-one-picture\/"},"modified":"2018-03-23T10:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T09:22:53","slug":"three-years-for-one-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/three-years-for-one-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Years For One Picture"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

\"banksy-night_projection_houston-bowery-w\"\/\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a move timed to coincide with the first anniversary of her imprisonment, Banksy has returned<\/a> to New York after a five-year hiatus to paint a mural<\/a> in honor of political prisoner Zehra Do\u011fan,<\/span> a Kurdish painter and journalist sentenced to almost three years for painting a watercolor of Nasyabin, <\/span><\/span>a city in Turkish Kurdistan <\/span><\/span>reduced to rubble by Turkish Army forces while fighting Kurdish rebels <\/span><\/span>– an image, perversely, based on a photograph the Army itself had circulated. Both the photo and painting show demolished buildings above which newly, bitterly mounted Turkish flags defiantly fly.\u00a0
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Banksy partnered with street artist Borf to <\/span><\/span>create <\/span><\/a>the mural<\/a> on the now-curated, 70-foot long <\/span><\/span>Bowery Wall<\/a> on the Lower East Side. It shows four long rows of vertical tallies amidst which <\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan\u2019s face looks out from what become prison bars and a sharpened pencil, presumably both for the power of the press and the newspaper <\/span>Do\u011fan runs in prison with other women. It is called <\/span>\u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcndem Zindan – roughly translated, Free Agenda Dungeon. Below the image, Banksy has inscribed, “<\/span>FREE ZEHRA DOGAN.” At night, he projects <\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan’s <\/span>painting above the mural. “S<\/span><\/span>entenced to nearly 3 years in jail for painting a single picture,” he wrote <\/a>on Instagram. “P<\/span><\/span>rotest against this injustice by (sharing) her painting, and tagging Turkey\u2019s President Erd<\/span><\/span><\/span>o\u011fan<\/span><\/span>.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of other Banksy works <\/a>have also popped up in the city – a large stenciled rat on a clock hanging from a former bank downtown, and a businessman whipping a group of fleeing people with a stock-market graph in Brooklyn. They’ve all been quickly vandalized or removed, but Banksy is focused <\/a>enough on the <\/span><\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan mural, and the injustice it portrays, to have returned to clean it up. “I really feel for her,” he <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>told <\/a><\/span><\/span>the New York Times <\/em>of her harsh sentence oftwo years, nine months and 22 days. “<\/span><\/span>I\u2019ve painted things much more worthy of a custodial sentence.\u201d
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rights advocates, including PEN America, likewise condemn <\/a><\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan\u2019s imprisonment by the increasingly repressive Erdo\u011fan regime. <\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan was the editor of <\/span><\/span>JINHA<\/a>, a <\/span><\/span>feminist news agency publishing news in Kurdish by an all-female staff, when she was detained <\/a>during<\/span> a wave of arrests after a failed coup in July 2016; in its aftermath, <\/span>over 180 news outlets have been shut down. <\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan <\/span><\/span><\/span>was charged after sharing her painting on social media; Turkish prosecutors also accused her of working with <\/span>the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, which is waging an insurgency against Erdo\u011fan. In response, <\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan argued she was simply doing her job as a journalist. After her sentencing <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>last March 24, 2017, <\/span><\/span><\/span>Do\u011fan remained unyielding. “T<\/span><\/span><\/span>hey (the Turkish government) caused this,” she tweeted. “I only painted it.”<\/p>\n

\"banksy-midwood-3455-1080x756.jpg\"\/<\/p>\n

\"banksy_small_zehra_banksy1603a.jpg\"\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n