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Journalists from China, Uzbekistan and Brazil and Zimbabwean media lawyer receive press freedom awards
Peter James Spielmann, Associated Press
November 22, 2005

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--pressawards1122nov22,0,3477160.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

NEW YORK -- The International Press Freedom Awards for 2005 went to a Chinese editor still imprisoned in his homeland, a Brazilian reporter who could not travel to New York because he is pinned down by lawsuits, an Uzbek journalist in exile and a Zimbabwean media lawyer.

A last-minute, long overdue arrival at Tuesday evening's ceremony was Manuel Vazquez Portal, who won an International Press Freedom award in 2003 but is only now out of a Cuban jail and able to accept it in person.

The laureates honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists have endured beatings, threats and prison as a consequence of their work in a profession in which danger and death have become increasingly commonplace.

The New York-based media advocacy group presented the 2005 awards to:

• Galima Bukharbaeva, former Uzbekistan correspondent for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting;
• Lucio Flavio Pinto, publisher and editor of the Brazilian bimonthly newspaper Jornal Pessoal;
  Shi Tao, an imprisoned Chinese journalist; and
• Beatrice Mtetwa, a media lawyer in Zimbabwe.

The late U.S. TV news anchor Peter Jennings was honored at the ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in the cause of press freedom.

Bukharbaeva, now in exile in the United States, risked her life covering the killing of hundreds of protesters by government troops in the city of Andijan in May. The Uzbekistan journalist faces criminal prosecution for her reporting on the Andijan crisis, police torture, and the repression of Islamic activists.

Pinto has reported on drug trafficking, environmental devastation, and political and corporate corruption in a vast, remote region of Brazil's Amazon, suffering physical assaults and death threats as a result of his work.

He has also faced a constant barrage of civil and criminal lawsuits aimed at silencing him, which kept him from traveling to New York City to receive his award.

Shi Tao, former freelance journalist for Internet publications and an editor for Dangdai Shang Bao, a Chinese business newspaper, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for allegedly "leaking state secrets abroad." He posted notes from a directive issued by China's Propaganda Department that instructed the media how to cover the 15th anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

His essays on political reform, published on news Web sites outside of China, drew the ire of Chinese authorities.

Mtetwa, a media lawyer in Zimbabwe, has continued to defend press freedom in her country, despite having suffered arrests and beatings. She has won acquittals for several journalists facing criminal charges, including two British journalists who were arrested during April's tightly controlled presidential election.

Portal was one of 75 Cuban activists arrested in on charges of working with American officials to undermine Fidel Castro's government _ something the dissidents and the U.S. government denies.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

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