CPJ to Honor Five International Journalists

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By Seyi Oduyela

Published: October 9, 2009

CPJ to Honor Five International Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor courageous journalists from Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan with its 2009 International Press Freedom Awards at a ceremony in November.

Mustafa Haji Abdinur of Somalia, Naziha Réjiba of Tunisia, Eynulla Fatullayev of Azerbaijan, and J.S. Tissainayagam of Sri Lanka and have faced imprisonment, threats of violence, and censorship to stand up for press freedom in their countries.

According to Paul Steiger, CPJ Board Chairman, “These are reporters who risk their personal freedom and often their lives to ensure that independent voices resonate within their nations and across the globe,” “Their fearlessness to report the news in the face of great obstacles is an inspiration to us all, ” he added.

“These journalists are being honored not only because they embody what CPJ stands for, but because they have fought against injustice to uphold the values of press freedom,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “Imprisonment, harassment, and threat of death cannot deter these extraordinary journalists from continuing their work.”

Anthony Lewis, noted author, journalist, and scholar, will receive CPJ’s Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in recognition of his continued efforts to ensure a free press around the world.

The awards will be presented at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on Tuesday, November 24. Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is chairman of the black-tie dinner. Christiane Amanpour, CPJ board member and CNN’s Chief International Correspondent, will be the host.

Here are the recipients of CPJ’s 2009 International Press Freedom Awards:

 

 

Eynulla Fatullayev, Azerbaijan: When Fatullayev’s friend and colleague Elmar Huseynov was murdered, the journalist set out to find his killer—and ended up facing more than eight years in prison. In 2005, Fatullayev was working as an investigative reporter for the opposition magazine Monitor when his colleague and Editor-in-Chief Elmar Huseynov was assassinated. In 2007, he published an article in Realny Azerbaijan, a newspaper he founded after Huseynov’s assassination. The article, “Lead and Roses,” accused Azerbaijani authorities of obstructing the investigation into the killing and alleged that Huseynov’s murder was ordered by high-ranking officials in Baku and carried out by a criminal group, including five Georgian citizens who had arrived in Baku two months prior to the assassination. Four days later, Fatullayev began receiving death threats. In the months following, he was convicted on charges of libeling and insulting Azerbaijanis in an Internet posting that was attributed to him but which he denied making, and his newspaper’s offices were raided and shut down. Then in July 2007, Fatullayev was hit with a series of politicized charges including “terrorism” for an analysis of Azerbaijan’s policies toward Iran. He was convicted in October and slammed with an eight-year sentence. In June 2008, the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan upheld Fatullayev’s convictions. CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova reported on Fatullayev’s case in CPJ’s special report, “Finding Elmar’s Killers.”

J.S. Tissainayagam, Sri Lanka: On March 7, 2008, Tissainayagam, editor of news web site OutreachSL and a columnist for the English-language Sri Lankan Sunday Times, went to the offices of the Terrorism Investigation Division to ask about a colleague who had been arrested the day before. He never made it back home. Tissainayagam, also known as Tissa, was one of the dozens of ethnic Tamil journalists who were swept up during the 26-year-long conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists, which ended this year. Terrorism Investigation Division officials arrested Tissainayagam and held him without charge for six months. Then in August 2008, he was charged with inciting “communal disharmony,” an offense under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in two articles written nearly three years earlier in a defunct magazine called North Eastern Monthly. In September 2009, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Local journalists say Tissainayagam wrote political columns about Tamil issues that were frequently critical of the government but not considered partisan to the separatist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. U.S. President Barack Obama highlighted Tissainayagam’s case during his World Press Freedom Day address in May.

: Anthony Lewis, United States.

CPJ will honor Anthony Lewis with the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award given for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in the cause of press freedom. Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Lewis is a former columnist for The New York Times. He is widely recognized as one of the United States’ foremost thinkers on freedom of speech and First Amendment rights. Lewis has been a tireless scholar of journalism, having taught and lectured at Columbia’s School of Journalism as well as at Harvard University. His book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment was published in 2008.

“For more than 50 years, Tony Lewis has been a frontline observer and eloquent chronicler of the issues surrounding press freedom,” CPJ’s Steiger said. “Two generations of readers owe to him much of their understanding of the crucial role that the First Amendment—and journalism—serve in democracy.”

The Burton Benjamin Memorial Award is named in honor of the late CBS News senior producer and former CPJ chairman who died in 1988.

CPJ will also finally present an award to 2001 winner Jiang Weiping from China, who was in jail and could not receive his award at the time.

The International Press Freedom Awards, now in their 19th year, are the centerpiece in CPJ’s annual fund-raising effort, providing more than a third of the budget for our press freedom advocacy efforts around the world.

To attend the awards dinner, please call CPJ’s Development Office at 212-465-1004 x 113

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