Fwd: [FAIFE-L] International Women's Day - Reporters Without Borders pays tribute

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From: Smita Chandra (smitac_in@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 08 2005 - 08:15:23 PST


Message-ID: <20050308161523.13136.qmail@web50909.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 08:15:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Smita Chandra <smitac_in@yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: [FAIFE-L] International Women's Day - Reporters Without Borders pays tribute


Dear colleagues :
 
Please go through this heart rendering report, posted at one of the IFLA forums, on the ocassion of International Women's Day today !
 
I apologize for cross-postings.
 
Best,
Smita--
Ms.Smita Chandra
Librarian
Indian Institute of Geomagnetism
INDIA.
Note: forwarded message attached.

                
---------------------------------
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
 Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web



attached mail follows:


Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 10:40:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@OCF.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: [FAIFE-L] International Women's Day - Reporters Without Borders pays tribute



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 12:44:34 +0100
From: asie@rsf.org
Resent-Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 12:40:37 +0100
Resent-From: RSF ASIA <asie@rsf.org>

Reporters Without Borders
Press Release

7 March 2005

International Women's Day

Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to women journalists under
threat worldwide

As the world celebrates International Women's Day on 8 March, a French
reporter is being held hostage in Iraq and four others are imprisoned
elsewhere. Five women journalists have been killed doing their jobs
since 8 March 2004.

Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to these women journalists,
cyberdissents and Internet-users who, risking their lives and freedom
have carried on, for us, their work of informing the public. "We call
on the international community to campaign for the release of women
held in Iraq, Rwanda, the Maldives, Turkey and Iran. Most cases of
murders of women journalists have been carried out with complete
impunity. Governments must act for justice to be done."

Thirty-eight of the 636 journalists killed doing their jobs since 1992
have been women.

A woman held hostage in Iraq

Florence Aubenas, 43, veteran reporter for the French daily Libération,
was abducted on 5 January 2005 with her Iraqi fixer, Hussein Hanoun
al-Saadi. She had been in Baghdad since 16 December 2004. An
award-winning journalist, Florence Aubenas has covered conflicts for
the French daily since 1986, in Rwanda, Kosovo, Algeria and
Afghanistan.

Three journalists deprived of their liberty

Young Austrian journalist Sandra Bakutz was arrested by Turkish police
in Istanbul on 10 February 2005 accused of "membership of a banned
organisation." She faces 10-15 years in prison. She had travelled to
Turkey to cover the trial of around 100 extreme left militants.

Fathimath Nisreen, 25, has been deprived of her freedom since January
2002, for working with online newsletter Sandhaanu, which had
criticised human rights abuses in the Maldives. She was condemned to 10
years imprisonment for defamation. She has since been exiled to Feeail
Island where she is serving a reduced sentence of five years
banishment.

Police in Iran on 2 March 2005 arrested weblogger Najmeh Oumidparva,
(http://www.faryadebeseda.persianblog.com == Dawn of Freedom) wife of
weblogger Mohamad Reza Nasab Abdolahi, who is also imprisoned. She is
three months pregnant and has been told she could spend ten days in
prison. Days before her arrest, she had posted on her weblog a message
written by her husband shortly before his arrest in which he claimed
the right to free expression and said he was "waiting for police
handcuffs."

In Rwanda, Tatiana Mukakibibi, presenter and producer of entertainment
programmes for Radio Rwanda, has been imprisoned since October 1996.
She worked with the priest André Sibomana, former editor of Rwanda's
oldest newspaper Kinyamateka. She is being held in extremely harsh
conditions in Ntenyo, Gitarama. She has been accused of murder but
Reporters Without Borders has been able to show that there is no
concrete evidence against her.

In the last few months, some dozen women journalists have been arrested
worldwide. They include cyberjournalist Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh who
has spent a month in prison in Iran for contributing to reformist
websites. Her colleague Fereshteh Ghazi was imprisoned between 28
October and 7 December 2004 for articles she wrote. She came out of
prison physically and mentally weakened.

Women journalists killed in Somalia, Belarus, Nicaragua and Iraq

Kate Peyton, 39, correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) in Somalia, was fatally wounded on 9 February 2005, when unknown
gunmen fired a bullet into her back as she was entering a Mogadishu
hotel to meet the speaker of the transitional parliament, Sharif Hassan
Sheikh Aden.

Iraqi journalist Raeda Mohammed Wageh Wazzan, 40, was found dead on 25
February 2005 in Mosul, northern Iraq, five days after being kidnapped
by masked men. A presenter on regional public television Iraqiya, she
died from a bullet wound to the head. An Iraqi group linked to al-Queda
claimed responsibility for her murder but it has not been possible to
check the validity of their claim.

Journalist Veronika Cherkasova was found murdered at her home in Minsk
on October 2004, while she was investigating arms sales from Belarus to
Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Despite evidence to the contrary, police
insist on treating it as a crime of passion. The investigator has been
harassing her 15-year-old son.

In Nicaragua, María José Bravo, 26, was killed in November 2004, while
covering clashes close to a polling station.

In Iran, the legal system is still obstructing the process of bringing
the murderers to justice of Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi,
54. She died in Tehran on 11 July 2003 after officials interrogating
her in a Tehran prison inflicted vicious blows to her head.

Women journalists harassed because of their investigative reporting

Reporter Anna Politkovskaya of the Russian daily Novaya Gazeta has
suffered constant threats and obstruction to her investigations,
particularly in Chechnya. In September 2004, she was poisoned, probably
by Russian secret services, as she tried to reach Beslan to cover the
school massacre there.

In the United States, New York Times reporter Judith Miller faces up to
18 months in prison for "contempt of court" after refusing to reveal
her sources of information to the courts in connection with her
revelations about White House manoeuvring.

Independent Colombian journalist Claudia Julieta Duque has received
death threats since September 2004 because of her reporting on the
murder of journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón.

Women who fight for husbands who have been imprisoned or disappeared

In Cuba, The Women in White, wives of the 75 political prisoners
arrested in March 2003, demonstrate silently every Sunday in the
streets of Havana to demand the release of their husbands.

Wives of imprisoned journalists in China and Burma regularly brave
official harassment to visit their husbands, bringing them food and
medicine that the authorities deny them. They also risk reprisals by
speaking to the international press. Zeng Li, the wife cyberdissident
Huang Qi lost her job and her home as a result of police harassment.

In Sierra Leone, Isatou Kamara, whose husband has languished in prison
in Freetown since October 2004, never stops updating international
organisations about her journalist husband’s plight.

In France, Osange Kieffer and Fabienne Nérac, whose husbands are
missing, respectively in Cote d'Ivoire and Iraq, continue the fight to
find them. "Everyone tends to want me to accept that he has been
killed, but I do not agree, I must continue fighting. I need proof, so
do my children," said the wife of Fred Nérac, who went missing near
Basra in March 2003.

--
Vincent Brossel
Asia - Pacific Desk
Reporters Sans Frontičres
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 70
33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)
asia@rsf.org
www.rsf.org

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