Press Releases

10/25/05

Anja Niedringhaus receives IWMF Courage in Journalism award

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- An Associated Press war photographer from Germany, a crime reporter from Bangladesh who was stabbed and beaten, and the founder of a magazine threatened with closure by Iran's government because of its coverage of women's rights all received Courage in Journalism Awards Tuesday from the International Women's Media Foundation.

The foundation's 15th annual awards were presented to Anja Niedringhaus, Sumi Khan and Shahla Sherkat at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria attended by more than 500 people who support its belief that "no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice."

Niedringhaus, 40, who has worked on the front lines covering every major conflict from the Balkans in the 1990s to the war in Iraq, was blown out of a car by a grenade while caught in crossfire in 2002 in Kosovo in 1998 and was part of a group mistakenly bombed by NATO forces at the Albania-Kosovo border crossing. She was the only woman on a team of 11 AP photographers awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.

In her acceptance speech, Niedringhaus said she was inspired to see the world by a globe her grandfather gave her when she was 7-years-old and chose to photograph conflicts to give people a glimpse of what is going on, especially the suffering.

"The real difficulties and the real courage belong to those who are subjected against their will to conflicts," she said. "I do my job simply to report people's courage with my camera and with my heart."

Khan, 35, reports on politics, crime, minority persecution, Islamic fundamentalism and corruption in Chittagong for the Dhaka paper Daily Samakal and is the only woman crime reporter in the city.

In April 2004, after receiving threatening phone calls because of an article she wrote about the ties of politicians and religious organizations to attacks on minority groups, she was attacked by three assailants who attempted to abduct her.

She was beaten and stabbed in the forehead, mouth and hands and her injuries were so severe she couldn't work for three months, but she is back reporting, despite continued threats.

Sherkat, 49, a journalist for 24 years, is the owner and editorial director of the magazine Zanan, or Women, which she founded in Tehran in 1991 because she felt mainstream journalism was ignoring women's rights in Iran.

Zanan's offices were attacked by fundamentalist gangs in the early and mid-1990s, and in January 2001 Tehran's Revolutionary Court charged Sherkat with anti-Islamic activities after she attended a conference in Berlin on reform in Iran. She appealed a four-month sentence but had to pay a fine worth two months' salary.
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