Courage Awards: 1998 Courage Award Winners
Elizabeth Neuffer, United States
Blanca Rosales Valencia, Peru
Anna Zarkova, Bulgaria
Elizabeth Neuffer
United States
As European bureau chief for The Boston Globe, Elizabeth Neuffer reported from some of the world's most dangerous hot spots. She has been menaced by gun-toting rebels, subjected to death threats, abducted by soldiers, robbed and threatened with rape. In 1994, Neuffer was one of only a few reporters in Sarajevo when a bomb exploded in a marketplace and killed 68 people. She helped pick up the bodies and then wrote her story.
During a 1996 interview with a Bosnia Serb commander about the execution of the Bosnian men of Srebrenica, the commander told her she was "asking too many dangerous questions," and added, "too much truth is a dangerous thing." Neuffer's personal philosophy about truth is far different. As she sees it, "The truth may be hazardous to those who tell it, but truth is not dangerous, disinformation is. As I saw in Bosnia and Rwanda, it is propaganda that fans the flames of hatred."
Neuffer was an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and wrote a book about war crimes and post-war justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, "The Keys to My Neighbor's House."
She was killed in a car accident on May 9, 2003 while on assignment covering the war in Iraq.
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Blanca Rosales Valencia
Lima, Peru
Blanca Rosales launched her journalism career writing a column for Marka magazine on labor rights issues and, in 1996, became editor-in-chief of La Republica, one of Peru's largest daily papers. As the relationship between the press and the government of Alberto Fujimori continues to erode, journalists are regularly threatened. In 1997, Rosales was one of those targeted when she was abducted and held at gunpoint for several hours.
Since reporting her belief that the Peruvian Secret Service was behind her kidnapping, Rosales has been declared a threat to national security and has been the target of a national television campaign to discredit her. She has suffered from panic attacks and works under the protection of two bodyguards.
Rosales was promoted to sub director of La Republica shortly after receiving the Courage Award, but in January 2000 switched to broadcasting and hosted a political television program focusing on the presidential elections in Peru. She reports that pressures on the independent press continue.
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Anna Zarkova is chief of the Criminal News Department for Trud Daily. She has been awarded national prizes for her stories exposing organized crime, police violence and corruption, but has also received threats because of these articles.
In May 1998 the threats turned to reality when Zarkova was attacked. She was severely burned when a man threw sulfuric acid on her while she was waiting for a bus. From her hospital bed following the attack, she implored her fellow journalists not to be deterred: "Colleagues, for us there is no other way. If they don't splash acid in your face as a journalist, tomorrow they will kill you in the street as a citizen."
Zarkova received burns on the left side of her face and body, and the damage to her left eye was so severe, it had to be removed in 1999. An arrest has yet to be made in the attack, but police suspect a man connected to Bulgaria's underworld.
She is determined to keep fighting. "Before our nine-year-old Bulgarian civil society had a chance to walk steadily, it was endangered by the outburst of the criminal revolution. Many Bulgarian journalists felt that they should step to the front line and join the fight to save their country from the criminal Mafia. I was wounded in the battle, but I managed to survive… I believe that free speech can only be possible if we keep in mind the romantic phrase of the Three Musketeers: 'One for all and all for one!'"
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