Natallia Radzina wins Committee to Protect Journalists' Award

The editor of charter97.org dedicates this award to all repressed and killed Belarusian journalists.

The editor of charter97.org website, Natallia Radzina, has won the Committee to Protect Journalists' 2011 International Press Freedom Award.

Besides Radzina, the prize is given to journalists from Bahrain, Mexico and Pakistan.

The Press Freedom Award is an annual recognition of courageous journalism.

All awardees, Natallia Radzina (charter97.org, Belarus), Mansoor al-Jamri (Al-Wasat, Bahrain), Javier Arturo Valdez Cárdenas (Ríodoce, Mexico), and Umar Cheema (The News, Pakistan) have faced recrimination for their work, including harassment, assault, kidnapping, torture, and censorship.

“We are proud to honor these journalists, whose tenacious reporting continues in defiance of severe censorship tactics meant to silence inconvenient truths,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “By resisting threats and abuse, these journalists give voice to daily realities in their countries and secure our universal right to receive independent, reliable information.”

CPJ will honor television anchor and reporter Dan Rather with its Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in defending press freedom. Editor Eynulla Fatullayev, who was honored in 2009 while still imprisoned in Azerbaijan, will receive his award after being released this year following intensive international advocacy.

All of the winners will be honored at CPJ's annual awards ceremony in New York City on November 22, 2011. The event, hosted by ABC News anchor and CPJ board member Christiane Amanpour, will be chaired by Brian L. Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast Corp. and chairman of NBCUniversal's board of directors. The awards will be presented by journalists Anne Garrels, Gwen Ifill, Mhamed Krichen, Robert Rivard, David Rohde, and leading First Amendment lawyer James C. Goodale.

The CPJ press release says about the award winners:

Natallia Radzina, editor-in-chief of the pro-opposition news website charter97.org in Belarus, was arrested in December 2010 by the country's security service following post-election opposition protests in Minsk. She was indicted on charges of organizing mass disorder and faced up to 15 years in prison. Radzina was released, pending trial, and forced to relocate from Minsk to the town of Kobryn, where her movements were restricted and she was ordered to check in daily with authorities. Unable to work and fearing imprisonment, Radzina fled Belarus for Russia, where she spent months in hiding. She was later granted asylum in Lithuania, where she continues to edit charter97.org.

Mansoor al-Jamri is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Al-Wasat, Bahrain's premier Arabic-language independent daily. With its probing, non-sectarian content, Al Wasat found a burgeoning audience while being subjected to harassment and political pressure. As revolutions swept through the region, authorities shut the paper, saying it was publishing false stories to incite Shiite unrest. Al-Jamri, called to answer criminal charges, resigned in the face of intimidation and harassment. Al-Wasat was allowed to reopen under state control, and al-Jamri was reinstated as editor-in-chief by the paper's board of directors.

Javier Arturo Valdez Cárdenas founded Ríodoce, a weekly covering crime and corruption in Sinaloa, one of Mexico's most violent states. In September 2009, unidentified assailants hurled a grenade into the weekly's facilities, causing substantial damage but no injuries. Days before the attack, Ríodoce had published a series on drug trafficking that was headlined, "Hitman: Confession of an Assassin in Ciudad Juárez." An investigation into the grenade attack produced no results. In a country where widespread self-censorship is the consequence of violence by drug syndicates and criminal gangs, Valdez still covers sensitive issues.

Umar Cheema, a reporter with the Pakistani daily The News, has continued to cover politics, national security, and corruption after his abduction and torture in September 2010. Cheema spoke out about his kidnapping immediately after being released and has been subjected to harassment and threats ever since. In keeping with Pakistan's record of near-perfect impunity in the cases of hundreds of journalists threatened, abducted, and killed, Cheema's case remains unprosecuted and unsolved.

Natallia Radzina comments on the award:

“This award is the world’s recognition of the fact that journalists in Belarus work in inhuman and cruel conditions of ongoing repressions and pressure. This is a sign that the situation in Belarus attracts attention of the whole world. The fact that Belarus, a European country, is brought into line with such problematic states as Pakistan and Bahrain, shows the abnormality of the situation in our country.

I dedicate this award to all repressed and killed Belarusian journalists – Aleh Byabenin, Dzmitry Zavadski, Veranika Charkasava and all who faced imprisonment, arrests, raids and fines for their articles, to all who continue to work in Belarus despite censorship and repressions. All independent journalists in Belarus are heroes. This is the award for all of us.”