AN imprisoned Chinese journalist, Gao Yu, has been awarded this year’s Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
The $25 000 prize is named after an assassinated Colombian journalist. Awarded for the first time this year it is timed for May 3, observed annually as World Press Freedom Day.
Gao Yu (53) began as a reporter for the China News Service in 1979 and went on to write for an economics weekly run by dissident intellectuals. In 1988 she published an article in a Hong Kong monthly magazine which the mayor of Beijing called the “political programme” of the “turmoil and rebellion” then besetting China.
Gao Yu was detained in 1989 following the Tiananmen protests and was released 14 months later owing to health problems. She was again arrested in October 1993 and sentenced the next November to six years’ imprisonment for “leaking state secrets”.
She is said to be one of at least 35 writers and journalists detained in China.
World Press Freedom Day is backed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as the time to review the state of press freedom in the world, to speak up against violations and to take action. “For us, May 3 serves as an occasion to campaign for 365 days of press freedom around the world,” says Unesco.
The day is also noteworthy for Africa because it is when, in 1991, a declaration promoting a free press was adopted at a conference in Windhoek. Southern African Development Community information ministers have adopted the declaration, committing themselves to promoting media freedom and plurality in the region.