(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a 21 December 1998 WAN pres release further to the bestowing of the organisations’s annual Golden Pen of Freedom award: Paris, 21 December 1998 For immediate release Press Freedom Prize Goes To Iranian Journalist Exiled Iranian editor and writer Faraj Sarkoohi, who has been persecuted by the regimes of both […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a 21 December 1998 WAN pres release further to
the bestowing of the organisations’s annual Golden Pen of Freedom award:
Paris, 21 December 1998
For immediate release
Press Freedom Prize Goes To Iranian Journalist
Exiled Iranian editor and writer Faraj Sarkoohi, who has been persecuted by
the regimes of both the Shah and the Islamic Republic, has been awarded the
1999 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World
Association of Newspapers (WAN).
The award, announced Monday by the WAN Board, was made in recognition of Mr
Sarkoohi’s outstanding contribution to the cause of press freedom.
In a statement, the Board said: “Mr Sarkoohi has persistently called for
greater press freedom in his country and has not been deterred by
imprisonment, harassment, torture or exile. In the face of unspeakable
punishment for the “crime” of promoting freedom, he has refused to be
silenced and continues to write eloquently about conditions in his home
country. At great personal risk to himself and his family, he has upheld the
highest mission of journalism – the search for the truth. He is an
inspiration to publishers and journalists everywhere.”
Faraj Sarkoohi, 51, former editor of the cultural journal Adineh, is the
most prominent figure in the clash between intellectuals and the Iranian
regime over freedom of speech. He was detained for eight years during the
Shah’s rule and, following the revolution, has continued to call for greater
press freedom. He was an organiser of a celebrated 1994 statement calling
for an end to censorship in Iran.
In November 1996, Mr Sarkoohi disappeared for 47 days. He said in a letter
during this time that he had been interrogated by the Iranian authorities
and badly tortured. Iran falsely claimed he had been in Germany, accused him
of spying and jailed him in January 1997.
During a closed trial in September 1997, Mr Sarkoohi was convicted of
slandering Iran and sentenced to a year in prison. He was released in
January 1998 but denied a passport until authorities bowed to international
pressure to permit him to leave Iran in May. He lives in exile in Germany.
In a letter to participants to a freedom of expression conference organised
by WAN in Stockholm in March 1998, Mr Sarkoohi wrote: “For some 100 years,
our people have been knocking at the door of modernity, but tyrants have
blocked their entrance. The tyrants cannot listen to anything but to their
own voice. They want the people to be a passive listener and are afraid of
creative dialogue of ideas. They want the media to be deaf and dumb, and do
not allow free activity of independent organizations of writers and
journalists.”
WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, has awarded the
Golden Pen annually since 1961. Past winners include Argentina’s Jacobo
Timerman (1980), Russia’s Sergei Grigoryants (1989), and China’s Gao Yu
(1995). The 1998 winner, Vietnam’s Doan Viet Hoat, was recently freed from
prison following an international opinion campaign organised by WAN and
other press freedom groups.
The association’s membership includes 57 national newspaper publishers
associations, individual newspaper executives in 90 countries, seven
regional press organizations and 17 news agencies world-wide. It represents
15,000 newspapers.
