This week the International Women's Media Foundation awarded its "courage in journalism" awards to eight nominees: Lydia Cacho from Mexico, Serkalem Fasil from Ethiopia and six journalists from the McClatchy Bagdad Bureau in Iraq (NYT link).
This is Sahar Issa's speech, who accepted the award on behalf on her colleagues (via the IWMF'S site):
[quote]To me, this award means that my colleagues and I have succeeded in what
we set out to do; and that our voices have carried, through war,
through death and sorrow, through sleepless nights and fear driven days
in an effort to reflect the picture of our country as we see it, and of
out people as only we can truly know them.
To be a journalist in violence-ridden Iraq today, ladies and
gentlemen, is not a matter lightly undertaken. Every path is strewn
with danger, every checkpoint, every question a direct threat.
Every interview we conduct may be our last. So much is happening in
Iraq. So much that is questionable. So much that we, as journalists,
try to fathom and portray to the people who care to know.
In every society there is good and bad. Laws regulate the conduct
of the society. My country is now lawless. Innocent blood is shed every
day, seemingly without purpose. Hundreds of thousands have been killed
for seemingly no reason. It is our responsibility as journalists to do
our utmost to acquire the answers, to dig them up with our bare hands
if we must.
But that knowledge comes at a dear price, for since the war
started, four and a half years ago, an average of about one reporter
and media assistant killed every week is something we have to live
with.
We live double lives. None of our friends or relatives know what we
do. My children must lie about my profession. They cannot under any
circumstance boast of my accomplishments, and neither can I.
Every morning, as I leave my home, I look back with a heavy heart,
for I may not see it again - today may be the day that the eyes of an
enemy will see me for what I am, a journalist, rather than the
appropriately bewildered elderly lady who goes to look after ailing
parents, across the river every day. Not for a moment can I let down my
guard.
I smile as I give my children hugs and send them off to school;
it's only after they turn their backs to me that my eyes fill to
overflowing with the knowledge that they are just as much at risk as I
am.
So why continue? Why not put down my proverbial pen and sit back?
It's because I'm tired of being branded a terrorist: tired that a human
life lost in my country is no loss at all in the eyes of the world.
This is not the future I envision for my children. They are not
terrorists, and their lives are not valueless.
I have pledged my life - and much, much more, in an effort to open
a window through which the good people in the international community
may look in and see us for what we are, ordinary human beings with
ordinary aspirations, and not what we have been portrayed to be.
Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to reach out. Help us to
build bridges of understanding and acceptance. Even though the war has
cast a dark shadow upon your nation and mine - it is not too late. I
thank my bureau chief and our editors for retaining a high standard of
balance and credibility, and I thank you all for being here today.
Good Day.[/quote]
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