Cartoon published in Gulf Times Nov. 22 2009

Is it satire, or just bad taste?

A cartoon of a crazed, angry-looking woman threatening a child with a dripping bowl of tainted gruel has left many Doha bloggers scratching their heads and looking for answers.

The sketch, titled ‘Housemaid's revenge,' was published in Sunday's Gulf Times, a local English newspaper.

The cartoon depicts a maid - presumably Indian, judging by the red bindi on her forehead and gold hoop earrings - threatening a toddler after being scolded by her employer.

The text reads:

Your mum shouted at me today just because I broke a plate. And I am going to strike back. Count on me you brat, you won't sleep at home tonight! You will stay at Al Sadd Children's Emergency. Open your mouth now. This dish I have made will make you so sick that it will make you dizzy for hours.

Many Doha bloggers strongly condemned the cartoon, but were undecided about the artist's intentions.

On Twitter, Weirdweb said:

No, really, Gulf Times, let it all out. Tell us how you REALLY feel about Indian maids. #racism #paranoia

On the forum Qatar Living,

Commenter Olive said:

There's so much wrong about this cartoon I'm not sure what the editor was thinking when he allowed it to be printed.

Some wondered if the message behind the cartoon was lost in translation.

On Twitter, tomgara said

What is worse in this Gulf Times (Qatar) cartoon - hectic racism or awful 6th-grade writing? The answer is both.

On Qatar Living, the debate turned to treatment of maids by their employers, who sponsor their stay in the country.

genesis said:

Mohammed cartoons are never meant to be funny. Most of his work is dark altough sarcastic. I think it's badly translated, the intention is how cruel some sponsors treat their maids

rMs_000 responded diplomatically:

It describes about the cruelty of some sponsors.. and devilish reaction of house maids. Editor doesn't show any partiality to both of them i say. So its neutral..

britexpat said

The message is quite simple..Abuse the maid and you risk her abusing the child

Satire or not, most found the cartoon to be in poor taste.

On Twitter, rachelannmorris said:

Not funny in any way shape or form

On Qatar Living,

Commenter Amoud said:

I don't like this at all…..Even the bad translation doesn't cover what bad taste this is in.

And Adham Essam chimed in:

Oh my God! I CANNOT believe that was printed. How on earth could they allow something like that??? Which ever angle they were going for, it is completely wrong of them to present the issue like this. For the maid. For the child. For the parents. Disgusting…

For more on the discussion, visit Qatar Living.

People may be too embarrassed to openly talk about it, but everyone does it, toilet or not. World Toilet Day helps people celebrate the importance of sanitation and raise awareness for the 2.5 billion people who don't have access to toilets and proper sanitation. This video by the nonprofit WaterAid highlights the luxury of having a toilet.

Celebrating your can may seem silly, but not having one can not only lead to embarrassment, lack of dignity and safety issues, but also preventable diseases and even death. When people don't have toilets, they're forced to relieve themselves in open streets, fields, or back alleys. The result? The contamination of drinking water and food sources, which leads to a slew of health risks. Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year. Even countries with abundant toilets have to deal with problems ranging from unhygienic public toilets to waterway-destroying sewage disposal.

Vanilla, blogging on Let's Look At It This Way from Singapore, says that people should care about toilets:

“I know this is a crappy topic to most people. It is unfortunate that it is a ‘taboo' topic to talk about openly and many people remain ignorant about the scale of the problem. I fail to understand how this can be an unimportant topic when, on an average, we visit the toilet 2500 times a year, or 6-8 times a day. In our life time, we would have spent 3 years in the toilet.”

Organized by the nonprofit The World Toilet Organization, World Toilet Day is being celebrated globally with various events. To further increase awareness, WaterAid announced the launch of its new ToiletFinder UK App for iPhone users this week. The free app helps Brits find the nearest public toilet while reminding them how lucky they are to have clean and safe toilets. The largest event today, called The Big Squat, asks people to stop and squat for one minute in a public place to raise awareness. These photos show people squatting globally, including this one of preschoolers in Singapore:

A blog from Brunei, the world according to panyaluru …, also shows appreciation for the toilet by putting it into perspective:

“Imagine if we are walking along in the row of shops in Kiulap or Gadong. Suddenly the tummy grumbles, just like the worst ribut you can think off. No rest bite. Grumble and grumble. Rumblings. The light is on amber and ready to turn green. But no toilets in sight. Not a single public toilet in the rows of shops…Add to that no water, no tissue, nothing! That could be the worst day of your life, your worst nightmare, ever worse than the nightmares those kids have in the Nightmare on Elm Street Movies. On this day, let’s show our appreciation to our toilets.”

Despite its serious side, many people have used humor to celebrate World Toilet Day. In the U.K., the blog London City Drains features a 10-question toilet quiz, while in this video high school teacher Matt Cheplic sings about the day.

Some bloggers point out that toilets alone may not be the answer. Sandhya, blogging on Maradhi Manni in India, says many men don't use available toilets:

“In a city like Chennai, where the climate is hot nearly 10 months of the year, I see men urinating on the roadside all the time. When women can control and go home and relieve themselves, why can't men do so, I don't know. So, first of all people should be fined heavily for doing this crime (yes, it is crime) on the spot. I have seen them doing this on the wall of the public toilets! In Srirangam, I saw them urinating on the compound wall of the temple even though every street surrounding the temple had toilets, which were clean, but pay toilets!”

While lack of sanitation impacts everyone, the taboo around toilets can disproportionately affect women. In some countries, modesty forces women do their business in fields before sunrise or to hold it until after the sun sets, leading to health and safety concerns. Joanne Sprague, blogging on Overturning Boulders in India, observes that women are absent from the morning toilet run in Chennai, while in Ethiopia the blog AN ADVENTURE IN ADDIS notices a similar situation:

“I’ve heard so often about the lack of toilet facilities for women or lack of toilets in general; that teenage girls in the countryside get up at 4 am to go out in the dark to do their business so they don’t get bullied by the boys at school or stop going to school altogether. Men just pee anywhere, cigarette in hand and there’s an assumption that women don’t need to, if they are thought about at all….I want to see a huge billboard in Amharic saying ‘Girls go too’ with a picture of Barbie sitting on a toilet.”

To celebrate World Toilet Day, blogger Jonathan Stray, takes readers on an international tour of toilets he's visited, from Thailand and the U.K. to West Africa and Oman, concluding:

“We in the west with our flush toilets and toilet paper and sparkling shower stalls are the exception; the rest of the world thinks a bathroom is a wet, smelly place, when they have a bathroom at all. A good toilet means you probably have a very good quality of life, so enjoy yours. Happy World Toilet Day!”

Photo of Tiled Toilet by nedrichards on Flickr, Creative Commons.

on October 16 when a boatload of 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, all ethnic Tamils, were rescued from their sinking boat by the Australian ship, but in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone.

Initially Indonesia refused to allow the boat to dock at an Indonesian port, but after negotiations … Indonesia took the boat “on humanitarian grounds” because there was a sick child on board.

But the asylum seekers refused to leave the Australian ship, demanding they be taken to Christmas Island for processing by Australian authorities.

Oceanic Viking breakthrough: asylum seekers to come ashore

There has been a spike in asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat following the increasing violence in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Kevin Rudd’s government has been heavily criticised for both its handling of the Oceanic Viking incident and refugee policy in general. His stance is supposed to be tough on people smugglers and border security but humane towards refugees. Critics see it as either too hard or too soft. It’s either encouraging so-called boatpeople or abusing the rights of asylum seekers.

Veteran News Limited journalist Piers Ackerman prides himself on his right wing zeal. Never a friend of Labor governments, he rarely misses a chance to go for the throat:

The Rudd Government has only succeeded in making Australia a more enticing destination for wannabe migrants who don’t meet the nation’s needs, it has helped people jump the queue of refugees seeking resettlement and it has boosted the bank balances of international people smugglers.

Rudd’s red carpet to asylum seekers

Jeremy Sears of An Onymous Lefty is a regular critic of Ackerman. He addressed his remarks to those whom he sees as driven by xenophobia:

One of the most obvious questions I’d like to ask the “THEY’D BETTER NOT LAND HERE” crowd is – where would you like to send them?

You realise that what the people on the boats are doing is precisely what you would do in the same circumstances.
And yet you want them STOPPED. You want them LOCKED UP. You want them SENT HOME.
And the party that promises to treat these people the worst, that party will get your vote?

I’m not scared of the “boat people”. I’m scared of YOU.

Mark Thompson blogs at Seeking Asylum Down Under. His detailed responses to the current situation have looked for the positives in a sea of negativity:

Rudd is between a rock and hard place, politically speaking, as the Coalition [Liberal and National parties opposition] and its conga line of fear mongers in the media whip up the refugee issue yet again. Many people are very prone to xenophobic responses on ‘boat people', choosing to believe the fear drum beaten relentlessly by Turnbull, Stone, Andrews and Ruddock et al. There appears to be something in a large slice of the collective psyche that responds negatively to people arriving on boats.

His hope is for multi-lateral approaches to asylum seekers:

Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers, the respective processing authorities, and the countries in the firing line. Opening a regional dialogue and developing a well-resourced multilateral approach, empowering all parties with a stake in a solution to this growing human crisis, would be a good start.

Labor all at sea on asylum seekers - but an opportunity presents itself.

Although this issue has generated a lot of heat and was a crucial part of the 2001 Australian Federal election, very few bloggers have posted about it lately. Perhaps it’s just too complex or a case of Tampa déjà vu.