Born on 1946, Kemal Kurspahic was editor-in-chief of Sarajevo Daily Newspaper Oslobodjenje from December 1988 until March 1994. In the first year of his editorship, the paper was named “The Paper of the Year in former Yugoslavia in 1989” and won “The Paper of the Year in the World” award in 1992. He took every effort to publish Oslobodjenje everyday in the ruins of the paper’s offices during the siege of Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which started in March 1992. Besides the 1992 IWMF Courage Award, Kurspahic received numerous other awards after that, including the World Press Review’s International Editor of the Year in 1993, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Human Rights in 1993 and the International Press Institute’s World Press Freedom Hero in 2000. Kurspahic was granted interviews with prominent world leaders such as Ronald Reagon, Javier Peres de Cuellar, Rajiv Gandhi and some others. He is also a noted writer and published a few books, including As Long as Sarajevo Exists, Letters from the War, The White House and Prime Time Crime.
IWMF Awards
- Courage in Journalism Awards Awardee, 1992