The cartoon is not about Indonesia’s 2019 election -- it is by a Syrian cartoonist and has circulated online since 2012
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 16, 2019 at 11:00
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The image was published on July 2, 2019, in this Facebook post where it has been shared more than 1,800 times.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The Indonesian-language text in the white box below the cartoon translates to English as: “A caricature in French media about Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election, which took the lives of 700 polling officers.”
Hundreds of polling officers in Indonesia died after the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections on April 17, 2019. Incumbent Joko Widodo won the presidential vote.
Out of six million election workers, a total of 486 Indonesian polling officers died after Indonesia’s presidential election on April 17, 2019, according to a General Elections Commission (KPU) tally on May 16, 2019.
The KPU statement was included in this report published on May 16, 2019 by Indonesian news site Kompas.
The cartoon has been shared on Facebook here, here and here alongside a similar claim.
The claim is false; the image was created by a Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, also known as Ali Farzat, who is critical of the Syrian regime and other Arab dictatorships.
A reverse image search on Google found the image published on his official website here, indexed under “Arab regimes”.
The cartoon was also published in this profile of the cartoonist by Danish news outlet Information on December 10, 2012.
The headline states: “If there is anything dictators fear, it is being ridiculed.”
The image was also published in this photo gallery of Ferzat’s work by Sky News Arabia on April 11, 2012.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
