IWMF Announces 2007 Courage in Journalism Award Winners
Lydia Cacho of Mexico, Serkalem Fasil of Ethiopia, and the Iraqi Women Reporters of McClatchy’s Baghdad Bureau Win Courage in Journalism Awards from the International Women’s Media Foundation
Peta Thornycroft of Zimbabwe is Lifetime Achievement Winner
Washington, DC – A Mexican journalist who travels with guards because of ongoing threats to her life, a group of women reporters who every day risk their lives to cover the war in Iraq and an Ethiopian publisher who gave birth to a son while confined to a vermin-infested jail cell for her work are the recipients of this year’s International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Awards.
“These women have shown dedication and bravery in reporting and in their commitment to journalism,” said Judy Woodruff, chair of the IWMF Courage in Journalism Awards. “They tell tough stories that need to be told, and in doing so, help defend freedom of the press.”
Winners of the 2007 Courage in Journalism Awards are:
Lydia Cacho, 43, correspondent for CIMAC news agency and feature writer for Dia Siete magazine in Mexico. Cacho, a journalist for more than two decades, has endured numerous death threats because of her work reporting on domestic violence, organized crime and political corruption. In 2004, Cacho published The Devils of Eden, a book based on her research on child pornography among Mexican politicians and businessmen. A year later, she was arrested on libel charges and driven to a jail 20 hours from her home in Cancun, with officers hinting that there was a plan to rape her. In recent years, she has written extensively about pedophiles. In February 2006, a tape recording of a conversation between a businessman and a Mexican governor discussing a plan to have her arrested and raped was obtained by the media. Several years earlier, in 1998, Cacho was raped and beaten in the bathroom of a bus station. She doesn’t know if the attack was related to her work. On May 8, while Cacho was testifying at the trial of a pedophile she has written about, her car was sabotaged. Cacho is also a human rights advocate; she is the founder and director of the Centro Integral de Atencion a las Mujeres in Cancun, a crisis center and shelter for victims of sex crimes, gender-based violence and trafficking.
Serkalem Fasil, 26, of Ethiopia. The former co-owner and publisher of the weekly newspapers Asqual, Menilik and Satenaw, Fasil was one of 14 editors and reporters of independent and privately-owned newspapers arrested after publishing articles critical of the government’s actions during the May 2005 parliamentary elections. The journalists were accused of genocide and treason, charges that could bring life imprisonment or the death penalty. While in jail, Fasil gave birth to and cared for a son, who was premature and underweight due to inhumane conditions and lack of proper medical attention. She was released from prison in April 2007.
Six Iraqi women journalists of McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau: Shatha al Awsy, Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed and Sahar Issa. Constantly under duress, these women dodge gun battles and tiptoe around car bombs to do their jobs in the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. They are targeted for their work, and so are their families. Their homes have been destroyed and they’ve lost family members and friends. Each day they risk their lives just to get to work. They are driven by the desire to report accurately the situation in Iraq, to tell others what is happening in a world that is dissolving around them.
The IWMF also announced that it will present its Lifetime Achievement Award to Peta Thornycroft, 62, of Zimbabwe. Thornycroft has been a journalist for 35 years. One of the few remaining independent journalists in Zimbabwe, she reports on human rights abuses, farm occupation, the state of the country as commodities become scarce and inflation rises, and government repression. A foreign correspondent for British, American and South African news media, she renounced her British citizenship and became a citizen of Zimbabwe after the government ruled that all journalists working in Zimbabwe had to be citizens of the country. Thornycroft has been accused of terrorism and barred from court proceedings, and in 2002 she was arrested while investigating reports of a campaign against members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. At the same time, she has led journalism training initiatives benefiting thousands of southern African journalists.
Created in 1990, the IWMF Courage in Journalism Awards honor women journalists who have shown extraordinary strength of character and integrity while reporting the news under dangerous or difficult circumstances. This year’s awards will be presented at ceremonies in New York on October 23 and in Los Angeles on October 30.
The International Women’s Media Foundation was launched in 1990 with a mission to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide. The IWMF network includes women and men in the media in more than 130 countries worldwide.
For more information about the winners or about the Courage in Journalism Awards, visit the IWMF website at www.iwmf.org.
The World Bank approved 225 million U.S. dollars of credit to [the Woyanne warlords in] Ethiopia Thursday to help the African Horn country restore its road network and reduce poverty [actually to help the tribal dictatorship continue brutalizing the people of Ethiopia and Somalia].
Ethiopia will use the fund to improve the reliability of its road transport infrastructure by expanding and maintaining the road network, and strengthening the quality and efficiency of road construction, management and maintenance, said the bank in a statement.
The project will also create conditions conducive for the domestic construction industry to develop in the road transport sector.
“The emphasis will be on facilitating growth, in both the agriculture and industrial sectors, by improving transport corridors as well as better linking emerging regions to the rest of the mountainous country,” said Yoshimichi Kawasumi, World Bank task team leader for the project.
The Ethiopian government has set a target to construct almost 11,000 km of new federal roads and 5,500 km of new regional roads, while maintaining over 4,000 km of federal and regional roads, according to the statement.
Tirunesh Dibaba, the double world champion at 5000m and 10,000m in Helsinki two summers ago, is looking to take a bite out of the Big Apple by attacking Meseret Defar’s world 5000m record at Saturday’s Reebok Grand Prix on Randall’s Island.
At last year’s meet with the track still puddled from heavy rains, Defar mustered a 61.5 second closing lap to cross the finish line in 14:24.53, toppling Elvan Abeylegesse’s world record by 15/100ths of a second. Dibaba, who set the world indoor 5000m record of 14:27.42 at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games last January, would like nothing more than easing aside her compatriot to have both the indoor and outdoor world records next to her name, instead.
“I’m planning to run a fast time for Saturday,” said the still baby-faced Dibaba, now 21 years-old, through a translator. “I can’t say what kind of time, but it will be fast,” she added, trying hard to supress a girlish grin.
Dibaba has been recovering from her silver medal performance at the brutally hot and humid IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa, Kenya, last March, and has not competed since then. She made it clear at today’s news conference at the Grand Hyatt hotel that she is ready to get back to competition, and having Defar’s record to chase is providing special motivation.
“In a way it has motivated me,” she said. “This year I’m going to see if I can do it (the record).”
Dibaba faced Defar seven times in 2006, and prevailed four times. Their relationship has been described as contentious, and Defar was curt in describing how the two women get along.
“Meseret, we train together in the international team,” she said. “We also have a good relationship. That is all I can say.”
In her 2007 campaign, she does not plan to race Defar until the IAAF World Championships in Osaka. “Right now there are no plans for us meeting,” she said. “But, we may meet in Osaka.”
* * * * * *
The Reebok Grand Prix 5000m for women will feature 16 other athletes including Kim Smith of New Zealand; Amy Rudolph, Samia Akbar, Lauren Fleshman, Katie McGregor, Missy Buttrey, Renee Metivier-Baillie and Sara Slattery of the United States; Rehima Kedir, Aheza Kiros, Yimenashu Taye and Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia; Megan Metcalf of Canada; and Mary Cullen of Ireland. Korene Hinds of Jamaica and Maria Munan of Serbie will set the pace.
(c) 2007 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved. Used with permission.
PHOTODibaba after winning the 3000m race at the 2007 Millrose Games in Madison Square Garden, (c) 2007 The Final Sprint, LLC
Thu. May 31, 2007 07:15 pm
By Bonny Apunyu SomaliNet
Somalia: Bomb hits Ethiopian army convoy, four killed when a remote-controlled roadside bomb tore into an Ethiopian army convoy in Somalia on Thursday wounding five soldiers, locals and a security source said.
The attack is the latest in a wave of Iraq-style insurgent strikes rocking the Horn of Africa nation.
“An Ethiopian truck was blown up,” resident Osman Adan said by telephone. “The Ethiopian troops immediately opened fire indiscriminately with heavy machine-guns.”
Seven locals were caught in the cross-fire, but local journalist Ali Dahir said he had been able to verify four civilian fatalities, Adan said.
“Two seriously injured soldiers were being removed from the truck. There was a lot of blood at the scene,” Mr Dahir added.
“Nobody knows whether the Ethiopian soldiers died or not.”
Witnesses said Ethiopian soldiers, in Somalia in a bid to help the government fight an insurgency led by militant Islamists, cordoned off the area after the blast and carried out door-to-door searches in nearby streets.
The security source in Mogadishu said one Ethiopian truck was destroyed by an anti-tank mine set off by remote control – a new tactic being used by the insurgents.
Meanwhile, Nato allies are studying a request from the African Union to provide air transport for its troops in Somalia, an alliance official said today.
“We are seeking military advice on how to respond to the request. There is an intention among allies to help,” said the official of an AU request he said Nato received in recent days.
The official said he understood the support would be similar to that provided to AU peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region, where Nato planes have since 2005 helped troop reinforcements and rotations.
The Nato official said he understood the AU wanted help “relatively quickly”.
At present the AU force is made up of just 1,600 Ugandans. Other African nations have been wary of sending more soldiers, especially after four Ugandan peacekeepers were killed two weeks ago by a roadside bomb targeting their convoy.
Nato’s air transport mission in Darfur was launched in July 2005 and was its first operation on a continent previously off limits to the Western military alliance.
It says it has provided air transport to some 24,000 AU peacekeepers and civilian police officers since then.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A thousand rare black-mane lions — an Ethiopian national symbol — and some 300 elephants are in danger after a swathe of forest that was part of their sanctuary was cut down, a wildlife expert said on Thursday.
The land was cleared from a designated conservation area at Midiga Tola, adjacent to the Babile Elephant Sanctuary located 557 km (346 miles) east of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Wildlife Association President Yirmed Demeke said.
Flora EcoPower Holding AG, a German biodiesel producer, cleared the forest after it was granted 10,000 hectares of land, Yirmed said.
“The company has continued to clear the forested land without any concern for the wild anmials threatened by the destruction of an internationally recognized conservation area,” Yirmed said.
Munich-based Flora EcoPower’s chief operations officer for Ethiopia said the company met wildlife experts and government officials over the past few days to solve the problem.
“We are not touching one area where there are elephants,” said Alon Hovev, adding that the area they were working in was 30 km from the elephants’ habitat.
The problem, he said, arose from a lack of communication between the company and conservation groups, which had been solved by the meetings.
“No one can tell us we are not taking care of animals. Anything they will tell us to do, we will do and we will contribute money,” he said.
Wildlife experts who visited the forest lodged protests with the regional and federal governments, saying the company had not conducted the legally required environmental impact assessment before cutting the forest down.
Tadesse Hailu, head of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Wildlife Protection Department, said local authorities must make sure that investment does not harm conservation areas, wildlife or the environment.
The 7,000 square-kilometer (4,350 square mile) sanctuary is the only one of its kind in Ethiopia, and is home to about 300 elephants, 1,000 black-mane lions and 250 bird and plant species endemic to the Horn of Africa nation.
The black-mane lions are revered as a national symbol in Ethiopia, where they are on the national currency and are often depicted in statues.
Scores of the black-maned lions are kept in a zoo in the capital Addis Ababa. Wildlife experts estimate that only about 1,000 remain in the wild.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 1, 2007; Page WE19
It has been a long time since Adams Morgan could claim exclusive rights to Washington’s Ethiopian culinary community — and in any case that longtime “Little Ethiopia” has been superseded by the cluster of restaurants around 14th and U streets NW — but it’s still relatively unusual to find Ethiopian establishments in the outer suburbs. So Herndon’s Warka, though small (perhaps three dozen seats, counting the bar), would seem to have a fairly wide area from which to attract its clientele. As it happens, the clientele is generally mixed, with non-Ethiopian fans of the fare happy to avoid the Dulles Toll Road or Beltway commute.
Some days, in fact, the customers are so “mixed” that only the carryout patrons and the music video stars speak Amharic. (Indeed, the little industrial park, off Spring Street between the Herndon and Reston parkways, is a melting pot of dining options: a pho shop, a kebab kitchen, a Japanese-Chinese restaurant, a Chinese one, an Indian cafe, an ambitious pan-Asian/Caribbean fusion restaurant, an elaborate bakery, an Asian grocery and a luncheonette.)Visually, Warka could be almost any flavor of restaurant; it is painted a foliage green and decorated with botanical prints, and the tables are ordinary square-tops. In fact, in some ways Warka could be described as an Ethiopian restaurant for Americans (or Americanized Ethiopians): The meat dishes and the fine house-made chili sauces are prime; the vegetarian ones are just pedestrian.
Ethiopians eat a lot of meat, and with gusto, especially as it relates to seasoning. One of the best dishes on the menu is gored gored, a heaping portion of high-quality raw beef cut into large chunks and generously seasoned with berbere and a little spiced clarified butter. (Berbere is one of the great spicy addictions in life, a combination of ground chilies, paprika, black pepper, salt, onions, garlic, salt and ginger, along with any number of other brown spices, such as nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom or allspice.) Kitfo, the smaller minced beef often referred to as Ethiopian tartare and generally available raw or cooked, here is served cooked only.
Yebeg tibs is cubed lamb — leg sirloin, by the taste — cooked with jalapeños, tomatoes and sprigs of fresh rosemary and served with awaze sauce, a pureed sauce like thick marinara. (You can get a hotter dip on the side if you like.) Yesega tibs is beef. Ingredients in tibs are generally cooked first and then hot-sauced, while those in wots are braised in berbere, sort of like the difference between dry and wet barbecue.
An even more delicious dish, for those who appreciate offal, is dullet, lamb tripe and liver (here mixed with meat), a gamier and more aromatic dish than the tibs; unfortunately, the kitchen can’t always obtain the ingredients.
Warka’s version of doro wot has more punch than many versions: The chicken (two drumsticks to a portion) is marinated in lemon juice, seared in spiced niter kibbeh and braised in red pepper sauce.
There are several versions of firfir or fitfit, a homey dish in which pieces of injera are cooked in the dish; there are lamb and two beef versions and one with fresh tomatoes, the Ethiopian version of panzanella. The injera here, incidentally, is very thin and light and only mildly sour.
On the other hand, though vegetarian dishes are among an Ethiopian restaurant’s strong draws, especially for younger diners, here they seem rather offhand or just palate-cleansers for the meats. On more than one occasion, the lentils and the cabbage were undercooked, and the lentils and chickpeas were bland, although described as spicy. (The lentils in the sambusas were also half-hard and tasteless, and the pastry, though crisp, hadn’t been blotted of its oil.) The greens, chopped kale or collards, were dull; the green beans with carrots somewhat better. And even when they were part of a veggie-only combo, the portions were restrained.
Even stranger, after a fine and seriously spicy first night’s dinner, a second night’s meal — one that happened to coincide with a room full of other non-Ethiopian customers — was surprisingly cautious, and the orders came out not joined on the injera-draped basket but separately on plates, which took away much of the fun and a good deal of flavor. (This seems especially odd since Warka’s Web site emphasizes the communal nature of Ethiopian dining.) It was a Saturday, with live music scheduled, and whether the kitchen was expecting a late crowd and feared running short of injera or just condescending to some perceived notion of American habits wasn’t clear. It would have been an aberration, however, as the staff is extremely pleasant and obliging.
In addition to a full bar, Warka offers a couple of Ethiopian beers and four Ethiopian wines: tej, the honey wine; a sweet red; a drier, rather thin red; and a light, somewhat floral white, which turned out to be a rather nice match for the spices. (The house wines are from California.) Though short, the wine list provides what could be a fine romantic opening: Tej, the menu says, goes back to the reign of “the Queen of Shebs-Saba,” or as she is known in the United States, the Queen of Sheba. According to legend, the founder of Ethiopia, Menelik I, was the child of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whose beauty some people believe inspired the erotic flights of “The Song of Solomon.” Maybe it’s more potent than you think.
Note: Although the restrooms have wide doors and support bars for patrons in wheelchairs, there are several steps at the entrance, and the two doors in the foyer are set at right angles.
