Courage Awards: 2004 Courage Award Winners

Gwen Lister, Namibia
Mabel Rehnfeldt, Paraguay
Salima Tlemcani, Algeria

Gwen Lister, 50, began working as a journalist in 1975 in Namibia, when it was a province of South Africa known as South-West Africa. After completing her degree at The University of Cape Town, Lister took a job at the Windhoek Advertiser. She soon left the paper when the South African government put pressure on the editor to sign a document stating that the Advertiser would cease to print positive articles about the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), which opposed the government and its system of apartheid.

In 1978, Lister and Hannes Smith, editor of the Windhoek Advertiser, founded the Windhoek Observer, a weekly newspaper. As political editor of the Observer, Lister was harassed and threatened by the South African authorities because of her political reporting and outspoken criticism of South Africa’s policies in Namibia. Not only did she endure police searches of her home, but she also was put on trial – and acquitted – for allegedly possessing banned documents.

In May 1984, the Publications Board in Pretoria, South Africa, banned the Windhoek Observer, primarily due to Lister’s political reporting. After raising funds from abroad, she challenged the ban in front of the Publications Appeal Board in Pretoria, and succeeded in having it set aside. However, while she was in South Africa petitioning the ban, the management of the Observer demoted Lister from political editor to reporter. The entire staff walked out in protest in support of Lister. They were dismissed and Lister resigned.

In December 1984, Lister distributed a document to various news media that was mistakenly sent to her by the government. It detailed the authorization given to the security police to intercept her mail. Several reporters went to press with the document, but their reports were banned by South African Security Police. Articles on the document appeared in several newspapers, including the Windhoek Advertiser and the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa. Lister was jailed for distributing and “publishing” the letter. Upon her release, her passport was confiscated. During this period, she was confined to the capital and required to report to the police three times a week. The charges were eventually dropped.

In 1985, with Namibia still ruled by South Africa, Lister started The Namibian newspaper and continued reporting on politics. In June 1988, when she was four months pregnant, Lister was detained because the government wanted to know how she had obtained and published a secret document that detailed a plan to give greater powers to police and institute a State of Emergency in Namibia. She was released after several days due to international protests. She continued to receive telephone death threats, primarily from whites who objected to The Namibian’s role in exposing human rights violations perpetrated by the South African security forces. It was often unclear who was making the threats, because the police and military denied knowledge of them. Pamphlets were distributed around Windhoek, claiming that Lister and others who supported SWAPO would be assassinated. Lister was also the subject of constant surveillance from the government security force.

In 1988, the offices of The Namibian were almost destroyed by a group calling itself the "White Wolves." The White Wolves were a group of right-wing whites who operated in South Africa and Namibia at the time. They firebombed The Namibian’s offices, put tear gas in the office air system and attempted to intimidate reporters by constantly harassing them with death threats.

Namibia finally became independent from South Africa in 1990. The Namibian remained independent and continued its watchdog role over the new government’s ruling party, SWAPO. Through the 1990’s Lister continued running The Namibian, putting up with constant harassment and hounding from both the government and private groups. In 1999, she learned that in 1991 the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a mercenary group set up by South African military intelligence to eliminate opponents, had sent an Irish mercenary to Namibia in an unsuccessful attempt to kill her.

In December 2001, the Namibian Cabinet banned all advertising by government departments in The Namibian because of what it termed the paper’s “anti-government” articles. The ban remains in place today. In May 2002, Namibian President Sam Nujomo also banned government departments and officials from purchasing The Namibian with state funds.

Despite these obstacles, Lister continues to publish The Namibian and write a weekly political editorial. The paper has a daily circulation of more than 20,000 copies, making it the largest circulation and, according to many observers, the most respected daily newspaper in Namibia.

Lister has served on the advisory committee of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s African Women’s Media Center. She was one of the founding members of the Media Institute of Southern Africa and was a member of the UNESCO Press Freedom Committee. She also serves on the advisory board of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In 1992, Lister received an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995, she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2000, she was named one of the International Press Institute’s 50 Press Freedom Heroes.

Lister lives in Windhoek, Namibia, and is the mother of two children, a son, 24, who is studying law at Rhodes University in South Africa, and a daughter, 15.

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Mabel Rehnfeldt began her journalism career in 1983 at Sendero, the official newspaper of the Catholic Church in Paraguay. Sendero was the only independent newspaper published during the final years of General Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship. (Stroessner was overthrown in a 1989 coup and currently lives in exile in Brazil.)

In 1986, Rehnfeldt joined the Catholic University as a press consultant. After the fall of Stroessner’s regime, she began working as an editor at the weekly magazine Dominical, a Sunday supplement to ABC Color, a daily newspaper in Asuncion that had been banned by the government in 1984 and then re-emerged as a leading national independent newspaper. She also began hosting a radio program at Radio Primero de Marzo, where she still has a daily broadcast.

In 1994, Rehnfeldt became head of the investigative unit of ABC Color and its website, where her primary beat is corruption in the government. According to Transparency International, a non-profit organization that works to curb corruption around the world, Paraguay is the most corrupt country in South America and ranks as the fourth most corrupt country in the world. Only Haiti, Nigeria and Bangladesh rank lower.

In 1989, an unknown man attacked Rehnfeldt after her articles on a corruption scandal within the police department were published. During the 1990’s, Rehnfeldt reports that she faced harassment, legal challenges and blackmail. In 1996, while investigating a gasoline smuggling ring outside of Asuncion, Rehnfeldt and her driver were chased by a car carrying three armed men.

Pressure on her has increased in recent years. For example, in August 2000, an unknown person jammed and interrupted transmission of Rehnfeldt’s radio broadcast. Over the course of an hour, he broadcast messages threatening to blow up the station and “disappear” Rehnfeldt.

In May 2001, the brother of the Paraguayan minister of Interior posed as Rehnfeldt’s husband and asked for bribes from officials at a government office, promising that Rehnfeldt would stop investigating corruption if he received payment. Rehnfeldt was able to document who this person was and what he had done, which resulted in his conviction and imprisonment. Yet, because of the minister of Interior’s influence, Rehnfeldt and her family still feel threatened and have instituted measures to protect themselves. They have built a tall wall around their home and have installed alarms throughout their house.

Also in 2001, an executive of a petroleum distributor sued Rehnfeldt for defamation after she reported that his company had stolen petroleum belonging to the military. Rehnfeldt won the case by backing up her reports and the executive was sentenced to four years in prison because of corruption.

On May 12, 2003, unknown individuals attempted to kidnap Rehnfeldt’s 11-year-old daughter on her way home from school with her babysitter. Neighbors reported that the daughter and her babysitter had been followed for two weeks and that three unknown individuals had been watching the house for several days before the attempted kidnapping. This incident closely followed the publication of articles that Rehnfeldt co-authored on a sexual abuse and embezzlement case involving one of Paraguay’s leading bishops. (The Vatican later removed the bishop after public protest.) Rehnfeldt does not allow her children to walk to school anymore and she and her husband constantly change the routes they take to and from work.

At the end of 2003, Rehnfeldt began investigating corruption among the government and former heads of the state-run oil company. As a result of her articles, Paraguay’s attorney general is prosecuting the company’s former directors. Rehnfeldt’s investigation also tied former Paraguayan President Juan Carlos Wasmosy to the case. Wasmosy verbally threatened Rehnfeldt with legal action and filed a complaint against her for “defamation and insult,” prompting her editors to change her work telephone number.

In 2003, Rehnfeldt advocated for the reversal of a government decree that requires journalists to register with the government for permission to work, claiming that the decree is unconstitutional.

Rehnfeldt, 40, is married with three children.

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Salima Tlemcani, Algeria
El Watan

Salima Tlemcani is the pen name of an Algerian journalist who began writing under this name in 1994, after receiving death threats from armed Islamic groups who did not like the way she reported on them. She has requested that she receive the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award under her pen name.

Tlemcani has been an investigative journalist since the early 1990s. Since 1992, she has worked for El Watan, an independent national daily and top French-language newspaper in Algeria. The newspaper was founded in 1990 when the Algerian government first permitted independent media. Previously, Tlemcani worked for Le Quotidien d’Algerie as an environmental reporter.

In 1991, the Front Islamique du Salut/Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a party of moderate and radical Islamists, won a majority victory in Algeria’s national parliamentary elections. The former socialist government nullified the elections and banned the FIS. The radical wing of the FIS, the Groupe Islamique Armee/Armed Islamic Group (GIA), then began a civil war in Algeria that lasted until 1999.

From the start of her work at El Watan, Tlemcani has covered the activities of armed Islamic groups in Algeria, focusing on the killings of journalists and intellectuals. Throughout the civil war, Tlemcani continued to speak out against the actions of GIA and FIS. Tlemcani is still considered an enemy by fundamentalist groups in Algeria. She is listed as an enemy on the FIS website.

She has also written about the effects of terrorism on its victims and has helped to create support networks for women and children who are victims of terrorism. She has written about eyewitness accounts of women being raped by Islamic terrorists and of isolated populations being massacred.

As a result of her reporting from 1993 to 1994, Tlemcani’s name appeared on a “death list” put out by GIA and the Armee Islamiste de Salut (AIS). Ten of the 22 journalists on the list were assassinated. For that reason, Tlemcani began writing under her pen name to protect her reporting. Many of her family members who work in the public sector have also received threats with the intention of intimidating Tlemcani, which is another reason why Tlemcani reports under her pen name.

More recently, Tlemcani has written articles on economics, corruption and the misuse of public funds. She also continues to report on women and minority rights. In 2001, she reported from Pakistan and Afghanistan on Algerian terrorists who had been trained in Afghanistan.

Tlemcani is currently battling three lawsuits. The Ministry of Defense has brought a defamation case against Tlemcani over an article about two military officers who were promoted despite being implicated in corruption. She is awaiting an appeal date for this case. The ministries of Interior and National Security have sued her for defamation over an article that reported on 50 police officers who had accused the national police chief of abuse of power. Tlemcani could receive a sentence of five years in prison if she is convicted and El Watan could be fined. This trial has been postponed until October 2004. She is also appealing a one-year prison sentence imposed as the result of a lawsuit by the Ministry of Health for an investigation she did of a public cardiac surgical clinic where the death rate was too high. This case is currently pending before the Algerian Supreme Court.

Salima Tlemcani, 40, is the single mother of an adopted teenage son.

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