(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a WAN press release: Paris, 12 June 2000 For immediate release The WAN Golden Pen of Freedom The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) on Monday awarded its annual press freedom prize, the 2000 Golden Pen of Freedom, to imprisoned Syrian Journalist Nizar Nayouf, in recognition of his outstanding services to […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a WAN press release:
Paris, 12 June 2000
For immediate release
The WAN Golden Pen of Freedom
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) on Monday awarded its annual press freedom prize, the 2000 Golden Pen of Freedom, to imprisoned Syrian Journalist Nizar Nayouf, in recognition of his outstanding services to the cause of press freedom.
In a message that was smuggled out of the Al Mazzah military prison in Damascus, Mr Nayouf issued an urgent plea: “help me, before it is too late.”
Mr Nayouf has spent a third of his life in prison for the “crime” of calling for democracy. He has been tortured and beaten so severely that he is partially paralysed from the waist down, is nearly blind, and partly deaf in his left ear. He also suffers from lymphatic cancer, liver disease and ulcers but is being denied full medical treatment.
He described the conditions in which he is held as “one of the most savage, bloody, criminal and secretive places in the world. Between three and five people die from torture here not every year but every day.” He called his prison “this cemetery of living creatures.”
His comments were read by Ruth De Aquino, President of the World Editors Forum, during the opening day of the 53rd World Newspaper Congress and 7th World Editors Forum, which drew nearly 1,400 publishers, senior executives, editors and their guests to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the four-day annual meetings of the world’s press.
Mr Nayouf’s award was to have been accepted by his brother Salah. But Salah Nayouf was jailed just one day before he was to come to Rio for the ceremony and released four days later. “We believe he was arrested to keep him from attending this ceremony,” said Ms Aquino.
Nizar Nayouf, editor in chief of “Sawt al-Democratiyya,” or “The Voice of Democracy,” has a further two years to serve on his ten-year sentence of forced labour for “disseminating false information” and for being a member of an “unauthorised” organisation — the Committee for the Defence of Democratic Freedom.
“It is simply unacceptable that so many governments world-wide continue to respond to criticism and dissent by locking up, and in some cases eliminating, their authors,” said Ms De Aquino. “Let us hope that at least one of these governments — the Syrian — finally begins, through this prize, to understand that its relentless and brutal repression of all free ideas, opinion and information, will increasingly make it a pariah of the international community.”
The Golden Pen for Freedom, given annually by WAN since 1961, recognises the outstanding action of an individual, group or institution in the cause of press freedom.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 65 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and seven regional and world-wide press groups.
