“I would rather go to jail than succumb to the regime”: these are the defiant words of Iranian satirical cartoonist Atena Farghadani, who is just the latest in a long history of extremely brave creative people to prove that brutal subjugation cannot subdue political protest through art.  She was released from Iran’s notorious Evin prison just a handful of weeks ago but has already posted a new cartoon on Facebook. A small thing, you might think. But when a cartoon in which she depicted government officials as farm animals appeared on that social networking site in 2014, it led to her receiving a prison sentence of more than 12 years. During her ordeal Farghadani was beaten, strip-searched, went on hunger strike and – despite being only 29 – suffered a heart attack. 

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