FY 2000-2001 Annual Report
2000 Courage in Journalism Awards

Silence is one of the greatest weapons of injustice, particularly in countries where ethnic strife, government corruption and indiscriminate slaughter take place far from the international spotlight. The Courage in Journalism Awards honor women journalists who venture into the heart of conflicts around the world to bring light to darkness and turn lies into justice. These uncommon women are brave and uncompromising, seeking the truth, often in countries where there is no freedom of the press.

Many times, they pursue their profession without recognition and with little community support. What sustains them is a larger sense of their purpose and the knowledge that their work is important to the world's forgotten victims: the dead and displaced in wars, the impoverished forgotten by callous governments and the countless others who, having no voice, rely on them to have a pen.

Each year, more than 1,000 IWMF supporters - including many leaders in the news media - gather at ceremonies in Washington, DC, New York and Los Angeles to be inspired by the stories of the Courage in Journalism Award winners and renew their own commitments to a free press and the highest standards of journalism. Thirty-five journalists have received Courage in Journalism Awards since 1990. Recipients for 2000 were:

Marie Colvin
The Sunday Times of London
United Kingdom

American-born Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times in London has covered some of the worst bloodbaths of the last decade. She has done some of her best work when the risks are high. In the year before she accepted the Courage in Journalism Award, Colvin covered Chechnya, Kosovo and East Timor, shunning parachute-style journalism and eating, sleeping and living as those she covered. Colvin brought her readers rarely covered perspectives.

While accompanying Chechen rebels, Colvin barely escaped when a Russian fighter jet attacked the group. Later, she made her way on foot through the Caucasus mountains with inadequate supplies in minus zero temperatures. Colvin was the only newspaper reporter to remain inside the U.N. compound in East Timor during civil unrest there. Most other journalists left after Western diplomats warned them that they might be murdered by Indonesian-backed militiamen intent on slaughtering fleeing East Timor refugees. Colvin believed that a Western journalist in the compound would give the refugees a measure of protection.

Colvin was honored with the Courage in Journalism Award because her reporting has made the world's war zones more than sanitized statistics on bombings and death tolls. Colvin said that she chooses to go to places torn by chaos so that she can bear witness. "Wars on the ground look the same - craters, buried houses, bombed houses, women weeping, dead children, suffering. The pain of war is really beyond telling," she said. In April 2001, Colvin was shot while accompanying Tamil Tiger rebels who were fired on by government troops in Sri Lanka. Her left eye was severely injured and she was flown to New York for surgery. She has since returned to her home in London, but as of this writing had not regained the sight in her left eye.

Agnes Nindorera
Studio Ijambo
Voice of America
Agence France Presse
Burundi

In Burundi, where more than 200,000 people have died in ethnic violence, journalists who report objectively on the conflict risk being labeled as traitors, an accusation that is tantamount to a death sentence. In six years, five reporters have been killed in the country. Still, Agnes Nindorera reports what she sees. As thanks, she has been accused of betraying her nation, beaten, arrested and interrogated numerous times. "I was beaten by a soldier with the butt of a Kalashinikov rifle," she said. "He stopped me from interviewing a former president who was under house arrest."

Another time, Nindorera was detained for six hours in rural Bujumbura "by a governor trying to hide the massacre of some 10 civilians." During the 2000 awards ceremonies, she recounted another near miss. Soldiers were on their way to her house to arrest her, but she was tipped off by a member of the unit. He was an old friend who wanted to protect her.

Nindorera, who received her graduate degree in journalism from the Free University of Brussels in 1990, follows accepted journalism standards of objectivity and fairness. As a reporter for Agence France Presse and the French and Kirundi services of Voice of America, she cuts through Burundi's "official" media propaganda. She also broadcasts for Studio Ijambo, a radio production house funded by Washington, DC-based Search for Common Ground that does features on a range of social issues. In her acceptance speech for the Courage in Journalism Award, Nindorera said that she hoped to return home and help create an organization to raise standards of reporting in her country and offer better protection to reporters in her country.

Agnes Nindorera is spending 2000-2001 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Zamira Sydykova
Res Publica
Kyrgyzstan

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Kyrgyzstan, one of the former Soviet republics, appeared to embrace democracy. This was good news for Zamira Sydykova, a young journalist trained at Moscow State University who had worked for a number of Soviet-era publications in the then-Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

"I began to feel like a real reporter. I did interviews with young democrats right in the street," she recalled. "Everyone wanted a fresh wind to bring long-awaited freedom."

In 1991, Sydykova founded Res Publica, an independent weekly newspaper that she hoped would "change the consciousness of the society." She had high hopes for the venture, because the newly elected president of independent Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akaev, said he supported a free press. That, however, was to change.

From the beginning, Res Publica was vigilant. From 1994 to 1996, the newspaper published stories accusing the president of the state-run gold mining company of corruption. In 1997 the government brought libel charges against the article's author and Sydykova. Though she fought the charges, she lost and was sentenced to 18 months of labor. She was also barred from practicing journalism for the same period. She served time in a prison colony, where her physical and emotional health suffered. Eventually, she received a presidential pardon, but was still banned from working as a journalist. These experiences did not derail her.

"The press must and can criticize the government," said Sydykova. "Corruption is the disease that spoils government and leads people to poverty. Therefore, corruption must always be an actual subject of the media."

When Sydykova was told that she had won a Courage in Journalism Award, Res Publica was not publishing due to financial hardships. In one year, the government had imposed fines totaling more than $5,000 - an exorbitant amount in Kyrgyzstan. Sydykova used her prize money to pay her fine. By the time she accepted the award in October 2000, Res Publica was again hitting the presses. In addition, in part because of the spotlight she received from the Courage in Journalism Awards, Sydykova received a grant from AOL Time Warner to support her publishing operation for one year.

Flora Lewis

Lifetime Achievement Award

Flora Lewis's more than 50-year journalism career began at the New York bureau of the Associated Press in 1943 and has spanned the world. Known for her incisive, clear explanations of complex foreign affairs issues, Lewis lives today in Paris and writes Foreign Focus, a column offered by The New York Times Syndicate.

Though Lewis started in New York, she quickly moved on. In 1943, she was transferred to Washington to cover the Navy and State Departments during World War II. She moved to AP's London bureau in 1945, two days before V-J Day, and has been covering foreign affairs ever since.

In 1946, Lewis began freelancing for numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine. Ten years later, she joined The Washington Post to cover Eastern Europe, then behind the Iron Curtain. She next covered London and published two non-fiction books. In 1965, as America's social rebellion began to simmer, she opened the Washington Post's New York bureau, and published another book.

Lewis moved to Paris in 1967 and began her own syndicated column, with datelines from some of the hot spots of the time, including Vietnam and the Middle East. In 1972, she joined The New York Times in Paris as its bureau chief. In 1976, she received the additional title of European diplomatic correspondent. She became foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times in 1980 and held that position until 1990, when she began writing her syndicated column.