(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a 15 August 2002 WiPC press release: International PEN announces PEN Center USA West’s 2002 Freedom to Write Award Winners: Russian Investigative Journalist, Ethiopian Free Journalists’ Association Named 2002 Freedom to Write Award Winners August 15, 2002, Los Angeles: PEN Center USA West announced today that it will honor Anna […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a 15 August 2002 WiPC press release:
International PEN announces PEN Center USA West’s 2002 Freedom to Write Award Winners:
Russian Investigative Journalist, Ethiopian Free Journalists’ Association Named 2002 Freedom to Write Award Winners
August 15, 2002, Los Angeles: PEN Center USA West announced today that it will honor Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who, despite arrest and threats of rape and execution, continues to report the truth about the on-going, brutal war in Chechnya – and the Ethiopian Free Journalists’ Association (EFJA), whose members are continuously subjected to arrest, censorship or exile, as they struggle to maintain a free press under a repressive regime, with its 2002 Freedom to Write Awards.
PEN USA’s Freedom to Write Awards are given annually to writers who have produced work in the face of extreme adversity and who have defended freedom of expression and fought against censorship. The awards will be presented to Anna Politkovskaya and Kifle Mulat, president of the EFJA at PEN USA’s Literary Awards Festival on October 23, 2002 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
Called by many “Russia’s lost moral conscience,” Anna Politkovskaya has made enemies of the most powerful men in Moscow, not the least of whom is President Vladimir Putin. Her dispatches for the Russian bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta, published in English under the title “A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya,” have won her acclaim internationally – and death threats at home. While other journalists and television news bureaus reporting on Chechnya have been intimidated into changing the topic, Politkovskaya refuses to be silenced, explaining to The Guardian’s David Hearst, “â¦the more I think about it, the more I would be betraying these [Chechen] people if I walked away.”
It’s not as though Politkovskaya, who was born into the Soviet elite 43 years ago, didn’t have her pick of careers. Her parents were senior diplomats during the Brezhnev years, and a life of ease could have been hers – if she had wanted it. But investigative journalism, which Politkovskaya has been practicing for the last two decades at the small, liberal Novaya Gazeta, was always her calling. In 1998, when Chechnya erupted in violence for the second time in a decade, Politkovskaya became convinced that an all-out dirty war was inevitable and that the big losers would be civilians. She had to write about it.
Since 1999 she has visited Chechnya roughly 40 times. In February 2001 Politkovskaya traveled to Chechnya’s southern mountains in an attempt to investigate allegations of torture inflicted upon Chechens held in custody. When Russian soldiers discovered her, she was arrested. Although released the following day, she was warned never to return to Grozny. She ignored that threat. But months later, following additional death threats, Politkovskaya went into exile in Austria, staying there for several months until the situation cooled.
These days she divides her time between that country and Russia. Of course, she has not stopped writing about Chechnya and, in fact, plans to do a book that will analyze the effect of the Chechen conflict on Russian society.
The statistics say it all: from 1993 to 1998 more than 200 Ethiopian journalists spent more than three months apiece in prison. And in 2001 the Ethiopian government under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had the dubious distinction of imprisoning more journalists than any other country on the African continent on changes ranging from “publishing false information” to “disturbing and inflaming public opinion” to “fermenting dissension.”
The Ethiopian Free Journalists’ Association was formed in 1993 to repel the government’s efforts to silence the country’s press. In 2000, after a seven-year struggle for recognition, the EFJA was given official non-government organization status by the United Nations, and today, the EFJA is the most prestigious and effective defender of journalists working within Ethiopia.
In spite of overwhelming odds, its reporters and editors have revealed governmental and, in particular, military excesses against the Ethiopian people. And they have done so at enormous personal cost. Garuma Bekele, a managing editor of the weekly journal, Urji, and Tesfaye Deressa, editor in chief of Urji as well as an honorary member of PEN, spent four years behind bars accused of “participating in terrorist activities” when they contradicted an official statement that three men killed by security forces in 1997 were members of the Oromo Liberation Front, the armed separatist opposition party. Lubaba Said, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Tarik and mother of two young children, is currently serving a one-year sentence for publishing an article describing the defection of certain members of the presidential guard. At least one Ethiopian journalist committed suicide rather than face another lengthy prison stay, and dozens have fled the country.
Whether they remain in Ethiopia or not, members of the EFJA refuse to be silenced. PEN USA is honored to have among its members Elias Wondimu, managing editor of the Ethiopian Review and a dedicated member of EFJA. No individual has worked harder to publicize the plight of his colleagues at home. Kifle Mulat, president of the EFJA and a journalist from Addis, will accept the award on behalf of EFJA.
