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AFL-CIO Solidarity Center Honors Journalists Putting Lives on Line |
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| IFJ General Secretary Aidan White |
In 2002, Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter and member of The Newspaper Guild-CWA (TNG-CWA), was brutally executed by Pakistani extremists on a videotape that was shown around the world on the Internet. A year ago, Russian investigate reporter Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in her apartment building. And just this week, a New York Times journalist was released after serving a three-year jail term in China.
These are just three of the hundreds of journalists killed or imprisoned while trying to bring the truth to the world. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports at least 155 journalists and media workers were killed around the world in 2006, the worst year on record. Click here to read the full report.
The AFL-CIO and the Solidarity Center last night recognized the unfailing courage and selflessness of these journalists by presenting the 2006 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to the IFJ on behalf of media workers around the world.
IFJ General Secretary Aidan White, who accepted the award on behalf of journalists who had given their all, told a crowd at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., the ability of journalists to do their job is critical for democracy.
This award is about democracy and decency.
White pointed out that although many journalists are killed on foreign assignments, the vast majority (95 percent) are killed in their home country. IFJ’s annual report on journalists and media deaths shows that last year, 69 journalists were killed in Iraq, bringing to 171 the number killed there since 2003. Mexico moved ahead of Colombia as the deadliest country for journalists in Latin America with 10 deaths, many of them investigative reporters.AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:
It is a testimonial to the power of today’s journalists and media workers that they have become the targets of such brutal acts of violence.
Like our colleagues who work every day supporting the fight for democracy, human rights and justice around the world, they too are frontline soldiers in a war against political extremists and corrupt governments who allow many of these crimes to go unpunished.
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Vice President Bob Edwards praised the IFJ for “making news for democracy” while TNG-CWA President Linda Foley called the killing of journalists in Iraq a war crime.
White says the union movement has been very instrumental in helping to provide humanitarian assistance to victims of violence and their families through the IFJ International Safety Fund and that unions have been in the forefront of the fight for safety on the job for journalists.
The Brussels, Belgium-based IFJ is the world’s largest organization of journalists, representing some 500,000 members in 117 countries. The nonpartisan IFJ promotes international action to defend press freedom and social justice through strong, free and independent trade unions of journalists.
Past recipients of the Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award include such heroic figures as Wellington Chibebe, the recently brutalized leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions; imprisoned Nigerian trade union leader Frank Kokori; Muchtar Pakpahan of the Indonesia Labor Welfare Union (SBSI); Han Dongfang, China’s independent worker-leader; and, most recently, Ela Bhatt, founder of India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).
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