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Gutsy Pakistani Journalists To Be Honored

A Staff Writer in New York

Najam Sethi, the outspoken Pakistani writer and editor, was dragged from his bedroom in the middle of the night in May by government agents who beat him, gagged him and then held him without charge for nearly a month. Now he and his journalist wife Jugnu Mohsin are among five journalists being honored here by the Committee to Protect Journalists, "for their courage and independence in reporting the news".

Called the '1999 International Press Freedom Awards', they also go to journalists in Colombia, Cuba and Kosovo, all of whom have been beaten, jailed, or had their lives threatened because of their work. They will receive the awards at a formal dinner ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria on November 23.

"While we in America sometimes take press freedoms for granted, the hardships endured by these courageous journalists remind us that there are many places in the world where basic press freedoms simply don't exist," CPJ Executive Director Ann K Cooper said.

"Because the threats these journalists stand up to are ultimately threats to all of us, we are deeply indebted to them."

Mohsin, the publisher, and Sethi, the chief editor of the weekly paper, fought to assert freedom of the press in the face of the recently-deposed Nawaz Sharief government's increasingly brutal efforts to control the media. The Sharief government made a speech delivered by Sethi in India an excuse for his arrest, though Sethi had been voicing the thoughts in the speech for many months in his own country. The speech was critical of Pakistani government's internal and foreign policies.

The Friday Times was called "an equal opportunity offender that has locked horns with Pakistan's leaders since its inception ten years ago," the CPJ press release said. "The paper repeatedly angered both former prime ministers Nawaz Sharief and Benazir Bhutto by calling on them to answer corruption charges."

The CPJ noted how during her husband's imprisonment, Jugnu Mohsin courageously refused to succumb to official intimidation. She published The Friday Times while waging a campaign to learn her husband's whereabouts and win his release.

Sethi's arrest galvanized the public and the local independent press, who saw the Sharief government's actions as a crude attempt to stifle political dissent in Pakistan, the CPJ added.

The other winners of the ninth edition of the awards are:

Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, who is serving a four-year prison sentence in Cuba for starting an independent news agency; Baton Haxhiu, editor of Kosovo's leading independent newspaper, Koha Ditore,, which he continued to publish from exile after eluding Serbian police and María Cristina Caballero, a reporter for Colombia's Semana, who received frequent death threats as a result of her work covering the country's escalating civil war.

In announcing the awards, CPJ Board Chairman Gene Roberts said, "The awards not only honor these five courageous journalists who faced jail, physical harm and even death, simply for doing their work, they shine light on the enemies of press freedom and democracy in many areas of the world."

The speakers will include NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who will once again host the awards ceremony, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and Ray Suarez of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc, will be chairman of this year's black-tie dinner.

For more information about each award winner, and for information about the work of the CPJ, including information about attacks on journalists worldwide, visit CPJ's web site at http://www.cpj.org or call 212-465-9344.

Or write to Committee to Protect Journalists, 330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001 USA.

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