ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA AWARD 2012 ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA AWARD 2012
Sunday 7th October will mark the sixth anniversary of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the campaigning Russian journalist and outspoken government critic, who exposed the brutal treatment of civilians in Chechnya at the hands of both Russian forces and Moscow-support- ed Chechen officials. Despite recent developments in the investigation of her murder, six years on, however, the perpetrators and those who ordered her murder have still not been brought to justice. The impunity continues.
In October 2007, we presented to Natalia Estemirova the first annual Anna Politkovskaya Award for her courage in seeking and telling the truth about the torture, disappearances and murders of civilians in Chechnya. She was abducted and killed in Chechnya on 15 July 2009. To date, nobody has been brought to justice for Natalia’s murder.
To mark the anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder and to honour Anna, and other women like her in the world, RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) annually presents the Anna Politkovskaya Award to a woman human rights defender from a conflict zone in the world who, like Anna, stands up for the victims, often at great personal risk.
2012: THIS YEAR’S AWARD WINNER - MARIE COLVIN
This year’s winner is a unique woman, a courageous war correspondent, who dedicated her life to reporting from the frontline of almost every major conflict in recent history. From the war in the Balkans to the armed conflict in Chechnya to the wave of revolutions that ignited the Arab Spring – Marie Colvin was there, bearing witness and giving a voice to those caught up in the heart of the ‘sandstorm’. She did speak truth to power. She exposed the horrors of war and made a difference.
We honour Marie Colvin for her courage, integrity and passion for truth. She lived a life of courage and truth-telling in the face of grave danger, just as Anna did, and paid for it with her life.
One of the most experienced and noted war correspondents of her generation, Marie Colvin lost her life on 22 February 2012 while reporting from the besieged city of Homs, in Western Syria. She had defied the ban on foreign journalists imposed by the Syrian government and entered the country on the back of a motorcycle – ensuring the world would hear about the atrocities against civilians that continue there to this day; hoping that the world would care.
In the face of grave danger, she stayed in Homs where some of the most brutal violence oc- curred. Marie, like the 2011 Anna Politkovskaya Award winner Razan Zaitouneh (from Syria) before her, became a voice for the Syrian people, who continue their struggle for freedom and human rights. “Simply: there’s no way to cover war properly without risk. Covering a war means going into places torn by chaos, destruction, death and pain, and trying to bear witness to that. I care about the experience of those most directly affected by war, those asked to fight and those who are just trying to survive.
Despite all the videos you see on television from Pentagon or Nato briefings, what’s on the ground has remained remarkably the same for the past 100 years. Craters. Burnt houses. Women weep- ing for sons and daughters. Suffering. In my profession, there is no chance of unemployment.
There is no easy way to cover a war. In Chechnya, the war could not be reported from the Russian side, so I travelled into Chechnya from Georgia to report on the indiscriminate bombing of civilians.
One of the rules I have in covering war is: don’t be afraid to be afraid - perhaps more important for a woman because you are often with men trying to prove they’re macho and watching you for signs of cowardice.
Going to these places, finding out what is happening, is the only way to get at the truth. It is not perfect, it is a rough draft of history. But historians can come later. You see such huge injustices happening and, as a reporter, you have the chance to tell people about that.
To me, bravery is not something gigantic and definitive. I don’t go into a war thinking I have to prove myself brave: that would be about me and that would be bravado.
Bravery is secondary. When you are covering a war, you have to be “brave” over and over again because it means going to places where you could be killed, and where people are being killed, and putting one foot in front of the other - however afraid you are.
The point is to try to report as truthfully as you know how, about what you see and make that part of the record. You can’t get that information in a war with- out going to a place where people are being shot and they are shooting at you.
The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that someone will care.”
- Marie Colvin
“Bravery is not being afraid to be afraid” The Sunday Times, 21 October 2001
ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA AWARD 2012
In her last broadcasts, on the evening of 21 February 2012, Marie reported live on the BBC, Channel 4 News, CNN and ITN News, recounting the “merciless” horror that was unfolding in Homs. Over footage of an injured child Marie reported: “That little baby is just one of two children who died today, one of the children being injured everyday. That baby probably will move more people to think ‘what is going on and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening everyday?’”
Marie’s final reports also disproved the Syrian authorities’ claim that they were not targeting civilians. She ended her dispatch to CNN with the words “It’s a complete and utter lie that they are only going after terrorists… the Syrian army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians”. The following day, she was killed, while escaping from a makeshift media centre in a civilian building, which was being shelled by the Syrian government army.
We celebrate Marie Colvin, who like Anna, carried on working, in the face of great per- sonal danger, seeing it to be her professional duty to bear witness and give a voice to those trapped by the violence of war and conflict.
On Marie Colvin receiving the 2012 Anna Politkovskaya Award, Lord Frank Judd, a member of the 2012 Nominations Committee, said:
“A difficult choice from a particularly challenging list of nominations! Marie Colvin repre- sented journalism at its most courageous and committed best – critically important for democracy and freedom.” About Marie Colvin by Razan Zaitouneh (Syria) 2011 Anna Politkovskaya Award Winner
“Marie Colvin, the courageous reporter, never feared searching for truth in the face of death. Marie went to many countries wracked by wars and conflict to bear witness…
In Syria, Marie chose the capital of the revolution, Homs, to report, both in sound and through images, an aspect of the revolution that the regime turned into an all-out war against the Syrians. Marie was not wrong in her choice. At that time, Homs was the whole event, the focus of most journalists, the symbol of the revolution, and the symbol of sur- vival despite voracious death….
Right up to the last, Marie Colvin was sending reports that show the ugly crimes commit- ted against the city and its people. Within a few seconds, she became the headline and content of the news…. let me, in your name, Anna Politkovskaya, honor your courageous colleague, Marie Colvin.” - Razan Zaitouneh “From Anna Politkovskaya to Marie Colvin”, 5 October 2012
The winner of the 2011 annual Anna Politkovskaya Award, Razan Zaitouneh is a 35-year-old human rights lawyer from Syria, who continues her work in hiding. She was forced to hide in 2011 after being accused by the government of being a foreign agent - for her reporting on the internet and to foreign media daily accounts of the atrocities against civilians in Syria.
The government has imposed a strict ban on access for foreign journalists and human rights advocates to Syria and Razan’s information website – ShRIL – became the main source of information abroad about the killings and torture of civilians by the army and po- lice in Syria. Razan has worked with the Human Rights Association of Syria to monitor and expose domestic human rights violations. Razan gathers her information for the foreign media through a network of political activists and human rights defenders.
Here she describes the day that she went into hiding: ‘On March 23, after the massacre at the Omari mosque in Dera’a, to which protesters had retreated. That day security forces surrounded the mosque and brutally attacked it. I gathered information from Dera’a and passed it on to international media. Subsequently, Syrian state television defamed me as a foreign agent. So I knew they would come to get me soon. I gathered the most necessary things and left my apartment’.
On 12 May 2011 government security agents entered Razan’s home and searched it, while seeking to arrest her. It is reported that when they failed to find her, they arrested her hus- band who was held incommunicado in an unknown location for several months. ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA AWARD 2012
Wa’il Al-Hamada’s brother, ‘Abd-al- Rahman Al-Hamada, a 20-year-old student, was arrest- ed last year and released after several months. He was again detained by Syrian agents in February 2012 and remains imprisoned to this date. The two men were detained and ap- parently used as pawns to force Razan to surrender herself to the government and to punish her for her human rights work. Razan’s elderly parents have also been reportedly forced to hide to escape arrest.
Razan has conducted interviews with international media networks condemning the acts of the Assad regime, such as the torture and murder of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, a young boy who had attended a protest against the regime with his father, as well as numerous other stories exposing the continuing killing and torture of civilians in Syria. She advocates for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to be referred to the International Criminal Court since his ordered security crackdowns on protests throughout the country killed more than thirty thousand civilians.
”We want the whole world to know what’s going on,” Razan says. “We all know the truth. We all know that the only terrorist group in the country is this regime, who has been killing its own people, who has been arresting dozens of thousands of people only because they want their freedom”.
PREVIOUS AWARD WINNERS
2010: Dr Halima Bashir (Darfur / Sudan) 2009: One Million Signatures Campaign (Iran) 2008: Malalai Joya (Afghanistan) 2007: Natalia Estemirova (Chechnya / Russia)
COMMITTEE OF SUPORTERS
A group of more than 100 influential cultural and political leaders joined the Com- mittee of Supporters for the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award. Among them are: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Andre Glucksmann, Nobel Women’s Initiative, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams, Terry Waite, Vladimir Bukovsky, Sergey Kovalyov, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Lord Frank Judd, Lord Nicolas Rea, Lord Anthony Giddens, Elizabeth Rehn, Sister Helen Prejean, Jane Birkin, Oleg Panfilov, Oleg Orlov, Ella Polyakova, Svetlana Gannushkina, Adam Michnik, Baroness Helena Kennedy, Bar- oness Shirley Williams, Baroness Molly Meacher, Mariane Pearl, Vanessa Redgrave, Gloria Steinem, Ariel Dorfman, Susan Sarandon, Monica Ali, Azar Nafisi, Yakin Erturk, Asma Jahangir, Naomi Klein, Michael Cunningham, Eve Ensler, Naom Chomsky, Gillian Slovo, Eva Hoffman, Anne Nivat, Alexei Simonov, Joan Baez, Peter Gabriel and many others. For the full list of the Committee of Supporters to the Anna Politkovskaya Award please see: http://www.rawinwar.org/content/view/65/202/
ABOUT Reach All Women in WAR (RAW in WAR)
RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) is an international human rights NGO supporting women human rights defenders and women and girl victims of war and conflict around the world. RAW in WAR aims to:
• Support women human rights defenders, working in countries in war and conflict, and help end abuse and persecution against them
• Work directly with women who are active in their communities in order to strengthen and enable their work on behalf of women and girl victims of conflict
• Carry out its work in areas of conflict, or “forgotten conflict”, where there is limited or no support from the major humanitarian agencies and organizations
Mariana Katzarova founded RAW in WAR in 2006, after working as a journalist and human rights advocate in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya, including 10 years as the Russia Researcher for Amnesty International. Originally from Bulgaria, she was a founder of the first independent newspaper in Bulgaria in 1989, called “Democracy”.
On the Anna Politkovskaya Award, Azar Nafasi (Author: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books) said in 2009:
“It’s quite extraordinary, as well as natural, that we should celebrate the work of Anna through celebrating other courageous women who come from such different nations, back- grounds, and speak different languages but all share a common language in their desire for freedom. Not just for themselves but for all victims of oppression.”
Natalia Estemirova ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA AWARD 2012
“… Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of pro- paganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you…
The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough peo- ple be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.
We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.”
– Marie Colvin, address at a service for war wounded at St. Bride’s Church London, 2010
RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War) Website: www.rawinwar.org Email: [email protected]
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