Courage Awards: 2002 Courage Award Winners

Kathy Gannon, Canada
Anna Politkovskaya, Russia
Sandra Nyaira, Zimbabwe

On September 11, 2001, Kathy Gannon, who has reported for the Associated Press from Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1988, became the eyes and ears of the Western press in Kabul.

Gannon was one of the few international journalists in the Afghan capital when terrorists attacked the United States, and she moved quickly to cover the world around her as it erupted into war. She was expelled from Afghanistan, but managed to return twice after the American bombing campaign started. At one point she was the only Western reporter in Kabul.

Gannon's years of steady reporting on the region and her wide network of sources paid off in understanding that shone through in her steady stream of stories. Gannon was inexhaustible as she courageously reported what she saw around her.

Working amid falling bombs in Kabul, writing her stories by lantern light, she recounted battles, explained the intricacies of Afghan politics and described the plight of ordinary Afghan people in clear, compelling prose. Bombs did not daunt her. Roadblocks of armed Taliban, who eyed her suspiciously because she was foreign and, even worse, a foreign woman, did not stop her.

Before joining the AP, Gannon freelanced for the Canadian newsmagazine, Macleans, the Gamma-Liaison photo agency, Japanese newspapers and the Christian Science Monitor. She worked at newspapers in Western Canada and Ontario and was city editor at the daily newspaper in Kelowna, British Columbia.

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Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for the independent, Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has covered both sides of the war in Chechnya, earning harassment from both the Russian government and Chechen rebels. She is known for her investigative reporting documenting atrocities against the civilian population of Chechnya by the Russian military.

In February 2001, while investigating rapes, beatings and murders committed by the Russian military in the village of Khatuni, Politkovskaya was arrested and held for three days by the Russian military, allegedly because her press credentials were not in order. During that time, she reported that Russian soldiers threatened to shoot her, rape her and harm her children.

While in Moscow in September 2001, she received several death threats because of her reporting. Initially, she was given security guards for her safety and was instructed by her newspaper not to leave her home. When senior staff decided that these precautions were not enough, her publisher helped her flee to Vienna. She returned to Moscow in December 2001 and continues reporting about Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta.

Politkovskaya graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in journalism in 1980. She worked for several trade newspapers before moving to the weekly newspaper Obshchaya Gazeta, where she worked from 1994-1999. She has worked for Novaya Gazeta since 1999. She is the author of A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya [Harvill Press, London, 2001].

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Sandra Nyaira is political editor of the only independent newspaper in Zimbabwe, The Daily News. She works amid almost daily harassment in a country with one of the worst press freedom records in the world. President Robert Mugabe, aided by his minister of information, Jonathan Moyo, has waged war on the independent press. All journalists must be licensed by the government and they can be prosecuted for criticizing Mugabe and his government. In Zimbabwe, journalists who cross the president risk beatings, torture and death threats.

In this atmosphere, Nyaira's newspaper has been the target of severe attacks for almost two years. The most shocking was the January 2001 bomb attack on The Daily News's printing press.

Along with another reporter and the editor-in-chief of her newspaper, Nyaira was arrested and charged with "criminal defamation" in April 2001 because she wrote articles accusing Mugabe and parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa of corruption. She traced payments to them from a builder who was awarded a government contract to build a new airport in Harare. The case has not been settled.

In May 2001, Nyaira sued Jonathan Moyo, the information minister, and the government-owned Herald newspaper for libel and defamation because Moyo accused her of fabricating news when he didn't like the story she wrote about an event she covered. Witnesses - including some from Mugabe's party - have confirmed Nyaira's story. The suit is still in the courts. Nyaira continues reporting stories that bring the truth to her readers.

Nyaira graduated from Harare Polytechnic with a degree in mass communications in 1995. She worked as a reporter for community newspapers and for the Inter-Africa news agency before joining the Daily News in 1999.

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