(WAN/IFEX) – The following is the full text of a press release issued by WAN on 27 March 1998: **Updates IFEX press release of 17 March 1998** Algerian journalist Omar Belhouchet and Iranian writer Abbas Mourafi are the latest personalities to join the No Freedom…No Culture freedom of expression conference to be held in Stockholm […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The following is the full text of a press release issued by WAN
on 27 March 1998:
**Updates IFEX press release of 17 March 1998**
Algerian journalist Omar Belhouchet and Iranian writer Abbas Mourafi are the
latest personalities to join the No Freedom…No Culture freedom of
expression conference to be held in Stockholm Tuesday, 31 March 1998, during
a meeting of the world’s cultural ministers.
Belhouchet, recently sentenced to a year in prison by the Algerian
authorities, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the influential French
language Algerian daily, “El Watan.”
Mourafi, one of the leading lights of the “new generation” of Iranian
authors who began writing and publishing during the Islamic Revolution, is
founder of the cultural magazine “Gardun.” Mr Mourafi was sentenced to six
months in prison and 20 lashes in 1996 and the magazine was suspended.
Also among the participants — some 15 writers, artists and musicians who
have been banned, beaten and imprisoned — is China’s best-known dissident,
Wei Jingsheng, who will receive the Olof Palme Prize at the beginning of the
31 March conference. The prize, which was awarded while he was in prison in
1994, will be presented by Lisbet Palme, the widow of the slain Swedish
Prime Minister.
The conference, jointly organized by the Paris-based World Association of
Newspapers and the London-based Index on Censorship magazine, will be held
during the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development
which brings culture ministers from dozens of countries to Stockholm under
the auspices of UNESCO and the Swedish Government.
No Freedom…No Culture, part of WAN’s 50th anniversary celebrations, brings
together personalities from journalism, music and the arts to examine the
relationship between the struggles for freedom of the press and other forms
of free expression, and to discuss the most effective forms of artistic
resistance to repression.
WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, groups more than
15,000 newspapers in over 90 countries.
Note: No Freedom…No Culture will begin at 09h00 on 31 March 1998 at the
Dansens Hus, Bla Ladan, Barnhusgatan 14, Stockholm, Sweden.