AJR  Unknown
From AJR,   December 1997

Journalism's Heroes   

By Unknown
     


The 1997 International Press Freedom Award recipients are:

Christine Anyanwu , imprisoned editor in chief of the independent Nigerian newsweekly, The Sunday Magazine, who is serving a 15-year sentence for exposing a government ploy to round up political opponents.

Ying Chanc a U.S. correspondent and contributing editor of the Chinese-language Asia Week in Hong Kong, and Shieh Chung-Liang, its Taiwan bureau chief, who are battling a criminal libel suit by Taiwanese ruling party officials over their reporting of an alleged offer of an illegal contribution to the Clinton reelection campaign.

Viktor Ivancic , editor in chief of Feral Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Croatia, who has continued his pointed and irreverent coverage of Croatian politics while fighting a seditious libel conviction and receiving death threats.

Yelena Masyuk , special correspondent of NTV, independent television of Russia, whose incisive and balanced reporting on the war in Chechnya under treacherous conditions has drawn harassment by Russian officials and culminated in her kidnapping by Chechen rebels who held her and her two-man crew hostage for 100 days.

Freedom Neruda , managing editor of la Voie, the leading independent daily newspaper in the Ivory Coast, who has been arrested, physically assaulted and prosecuted for criminal libel for criticizing the government's policies and conduct.

###