Honor, and rise and fall

New York-based International Women's Media Foundation, or IWMF, announced its 2006 Courage Award Winners.

Among the three recipients is Chinese reporter Gao Yu, who has been jailed twice for her reporting.

Gao (高瑜), 62, won the IWMF's Courage in Journalism Award in 1995 but was unable to receive her award due to her imprisonment in China.

IWMF said that Gao, an economic and political reporter, was sentenced in 1993 to six years in prison for "leaking state secrets," through – ironically – a pro-Chinese government newspaper in Hong Kong. Gao was released on medical parole in March 1999, but the terms of her release restricted her from speaking with reporters. She completed the remainder of her jail term at home.

IWMF also said during the 1980s, Gao became known for her investigative pieces on economic issues and her interviews with many of the major architects of reform. Though she was placed under house arrest, Gao's writings were instrumental in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. Her willingness to jeopardize her safety and career in the service of freedom, democracy and human rights contributed to the free press movement. She won the Golden Pen of Freedom in 1995 from the Federation of International Editors of Journals. In 1997, the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was awarded by an independent international jury to Gao.

The other two IWMF award winners are Jill Carroll and May Chidiac.

Jill, a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, was working in Baghdad as a freelance reporter for the Monitor when she was abducted on 7 January 2006. Carroll was kidnapped about 100 yards from the office of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni politician. She had scheduled an interview with him but started to leave after an aide told her he was unavailable. Upon driving away, a large truck blocked the path. Armed men surrounded the car, and Carroll was shoved and kidnapped. After an 82-day ordeal, she was released March 30 and returned to the U.S. 2 April.

May Chidiac, 43, is one of the best known faces on Lebanese television.

In September 2005, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation journalist lost her left hand and left leg as a result of a bomb exploding under the driver's seat of her car. She believes the attack came as a result of her criticism of Syria’s involvement in Lebanon. According to reports obtained by the Committee to Protect Journalists, half a kilogram of explosives was placed in Chidiac's Range Rover. The explosion blew off the driver-side door, which was recovered more than 30 feet away from Chidiac’s car.

If Gao Yu's award mirrors lack of improvement in press freedom in the mainland, an annual report by Paris-based Reporters sans frontieres, or Reports Without Borders, may prove that Hong Kong may have infected with press freedom deficiency from its mother country.

According to 2006 edition of RSF's Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index,, Hong Kong's press freedom ranking slipped from 39th to 58th, its lowest point in the past five years or since the compilation of the list in 2002, after a year that saw vandalism committed against a local newspaper office and a parcel bomb sent to two reporters.

The first incident occurred last November, when two staff members at Chinese- language Ming Pao Daily News were slightly injured by a parcel bomb they had tried to open. The parcel, addressed to the newspaper's chief editor, arrived with a bouquet of flowers commending the publication for the "good things" Ming Pao reported in mid-October.

The second one occurred in the spring, when vandals smashed through the glass doors of the Hong Kong office of Epoch Times, a newspaper closely linked with the Falun Gong spiritual group. During the night raid, the vandals ransacked the offices and hacked away at the newspaper's in-house printing press.

Serenade Woo, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said she hoped the government would not look lightly upon the report's findings, and predicted that low rankings would hurt foreign investment since investors valued open and free access to information.

However, RSF noted in the report that Hong Kong's media "continued to be very free and the Internet is not censored at all".

Meanwhile, Singapore dropped from 140th to 146th in the world just three weeks after it banned the Far East Economic Review for publishing an article on opposition party leader Chee Soon Juan that Singapore's leaders considered defamatory. It is currently an offense to import or possess copies of the magazine for sale or distribution in the city state.

Topping the list this year are Finland, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands, with still more European and Scandinavian countries close behind. The top 15 countries are all from the region.

The United Kingdom ranked 27th, while the United States dropped nine spots to 53rd place. South Korea, at 31st, is tops among East Asian nations, with Taiwan next at 43rd.

Lastly, salute to prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot to death on 7 October in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow.

Anna was known for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya. Prosecutors believe the killing could be connected to her investigative work. She was a tireless reporter who had written a critical book on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.