Dr Nguyen Dan Que is named in the Index on Censorship Law Award 2005

 

 

Index on Censorship

10.02.2005

 

 

Index on Censorship has announced the shortlist for its annual Freedom of Expression Awards on 1 March at City Hall, London. The 2005 awards will be presented by leading TV journalist Anna Ford, with special guest speaker Bob Geldof. The nominees are:

 

Index on Censorship Book Award 2005

To honour freedom of expression through literature: “The five eventually selected are remarkable for the stories they uncover – some of them shocking, all of them deeply moving – and the quality of writing,” says Index on Censorship chief executive Ursula Owen.

• Soldiers of Light: Daniel Bergner. In 10 years of civil war Sierra Leone has experienced unimaginable violence and suffering. Journalist Daniel Bergner records the experience of the next generation as they look to the future, and the human faces behind the UN statistics.

• The Stone Fields: Courtney Angela Brkic. Twenty-three-year-old forensic archaeologist Courtney Brkic – whose father is Croatian - describes the gruesome task of excavating mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia and transcribing the testimonies of survivors.

• Secret Histories: Emma Larkin. Burma is ruled by one of the oldest and most brutal military dictatorships in the world. Larkin journeys to this hidden country, talking to its people and retracing the places Orwell lived when he worked in the imperial police force.

• Burned Alive: Souad. The true story of Souad, one of six girls born into a village family in the West Bank. At 17, when Souad’s family found out she was pregnant, her brother in law attempted to burn her alive and her mother tried to poison her.

• Guantanamo: David Rose. The first book published in the UK about the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, written by one of the few journalists to be allowed access. It includes interviews with British detainees and new information from key US intelligence figures.

The Index on Censorship Film Award 2005

An annual award that honours freedom of expression in film and documentary.

• Are Muslims Hated? Directed by Kenan Malik. Malik challenges the common assertion that Islamophobia is rife in Britain and argues that our perceptions are manipulated to suit the political ends of the hierarchies in Whitehall and in the Muslim community.

• Black Gold: Directed by Nick Francis. Coffee is the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil with an industry worth over $55 billion. But the livelihoods of 25 million coffee growers around the world are being wiped out by an unequal system of international trade.

• Final Solution: Directed by Rakesh Sharma. Filmed in Gujarat during the pogroms against Muslims in 2003, Final Solution graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India. Banned in India for several months before public protests forced its release.

• Submission: Directed by Theo Van Gogh. An 11 minute film dramatising violence against Muslim women and broadcast in August 2003, director Theo Van Gogh was murdered two months later and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, forced into hiding from Islamist assassins.

• The Red Dance: Directed by Yezid Campos. ‘El baile rojo’ records the failure of the peace accords reached in March 1984 and the campaign of assassination levelled against left-wing Patriotic Union members that followed.

Index on Censorship / The Guardian - Hugo Young Award for Journalism

This award, given in memory of Guardian columnist Hugo Young, goes to a journalist who has shown an outstanding commitment to journalistic integrity in defence of freedom of expression.

• Deyda Hydara (Gambia), was shot dead by unknown men as he drove two of his newspaper staff home after work in December 2004. One of Gambia's most respected journalists and a long time champion of media rights; he had clashed with the government on several occasions.

• Dawit Isaac (Sweden), an Eritrean journalist with Swedish citizenship, who along with twelve other independent journalists has been detained incommunicado, without charge or trial, since September 2001. No charges are known to have been filed against any of them.

• Paul Kamara (Sierra Leone), founder and editor of the daily For Di People, was sentenced by the high court in Sierra Leone in October 2004 to four years in prison for ‘seditiously’ libelling President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in an article which accused him of fraud..

• Sumi Khan (Bangladesh), Chittagong correspondent for Weekly 2000, was stabbed and critically wounded in April 2004. She had exposed local politicians and religious groups’ part in attacks on minority communities and kidnapping and land grabbing by landlords.

The Index on Censorship Law Award 2005

This is a new award reflecting the importance of legal work to freedom of expression issues and will be presented to campaigning human rights organisations or individual lawyers for their outstanding defence of freedom of expression.

• The Centre for Constitutional Rights (USA), for its groundbreaking case brought to the Supreme Court, which allowed foreign nationals held by the US outside of its sovereign territories, to challenge the legality of their detention through US courts.

• Zheng Enchong (China), arrested and accused of stealing ‘state secrets’ and passing them to ‘entities outside of China’ – in fact information about a labour protest in Shanghai to Human Rights in China (HRIC). Zheng was tried behind closed doors and jailed for three years.

• Sean Humber, Partner, Leigh Day & Co (UK) Sean Humber has worked tirelessly to employ the Human Rights Act and disability discrimination legislation to help establish the rights of prisoners to the same range and quality of healthcare as the general public.

• Dr Nguyen Dan Que (Vietnam) Detained without trial for ten years in 1976 for forming an organization called the National Front for Progress; he was jailed again in 1990 and again in 2004 for his internet writings. He was freed this month in Vietnam’s Tet holiday amnesty.

Index on Censorship Whistleblower Award 2005

An award for a very particular kind of courage. “These shortlisted candidates have exposed wrongdoing in very different ways; all have challenged unacceptable actions in civilised society,” says Index on Censorship chief executive Ursula Owen.

• Army Specialist Joseph M. Darby (USA), who handed over photographs documenting prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the authorities, convinced that this was his duty as a soldier. His act has been praised by many, but he has faced death threats at home.

• Grigoris Lazos (Greece) a sociologist and criminologist who has campaigned tirelessly against human trafficking, and almost single-handedly put the issue on the government’s agenda in defiance of death threats from the criminal gangs that run the evil trade.

• Manik Saha (Bangladesh) a well known lawyer, environmental activist and a journalist for the daily New Age and for the Bengali service of the BBC World Service, killed by a home-made bomb – the fourth journalist to have been killed in the region in three years.

• David Munyakei (Kenya), who blew the whistle on suspect transactions between the government and an international gold and diamonds combine. He was arrested and sacked and despite an ongoing judicial inquiry still awaits reinstatement after ten years.

The judges

This year’s judges are Observer journalist Jason Burke, human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy QC, novelist Hari Kunzru, actor Bill Nighy and educationalist Christopher Woodhead, alongside Index patrons Caroline Moorehead and Geoffrey Hosking.

• Index on Censorship magazine is still the essential source of information on freedom of expression issues. After recording abuses of freedom of speech for more than 30 years, Index is getting closer to the free speech story on the ground, with media support projects in Iraq and the Central Asian republics during 2003 and 2004, and new projects planned in 2005 for Russia, West Africa and the Arab speaking world. We monitor free speech abuses, lobby for changes in the law, support the independent press through training programmes and open up the Internet to new or hitherto silenced opinion.

"Index’s role, which it has sustained admirably over so many years, is to excavate the real facts and expose the truth. Long may it continue! - Harold Pinter.