“Stifled by heavy-handed censors, a dozen Arab cartoonists have spirited to Lebanon drawings banned in their own countries and have put on them on display in Beirut as their way of fighting back. The cartoons from Sudan, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq and other Arab capitals provide a satirical view of an Arab world eaten by totalitarianism, corruption, rampant unemployment and chronic violence. One shows a military general decapitating a pen, another depicts an Arab leader showering his people with the word ‘democracy’ while yet another, from Bahrain, shows the cartoonist’s traditional pen being replaced by a knife.

“They are among 100 drawings deemed ‘inappropriate’ by censors and on display until Sunday at the Samir Kassir foundation in Beirut, according to organisers of the show.”