Courage Award Winners

Post- Election Chaos in Belarus: Presidential Candidates, Journalists Beaten and Jailed Hundreds of protestors have been beaten and jailed by police ...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank IWMF for giving me the Courage in Journalism Award. Since Chinese authorities refused to issue me a pas...

By Susanne Ramirez de Arellano Since she was a small child, Tsering Woeser dreamt of being a journalist. As she grew up, she became a writer and do...

By Lindsey Wray At age four, Vicky Ntetema would sneak out of her house in Tanzania to go to school. She was still too young to enroll. Her mother ...

By Marjorie Miller Claudia Julieta Duque knew that journalists were at risk in Colombia, of course. She had been following current affairs since sh...

By Marjorie Miller Before becoming a journalist, Alma Guillermoprieto studied dance with the great Merce Cunningham. In a post for The New Yorker ...

Women worldwide are fighting for the truth. A Tibetan poet and blogger who stares down the Chinese government; a Tanzanian freelance reporter who r...

An investigative journalist and correspondent for Radio Nizkor in Colombia, Duque tackles some of the most difficult and dangerous stories in Colombia, including child trafficking, illegal adoption, infiltration of paramilitary groups into Colombian state institutions, human rights violations, and the murder of political humorist and journalist Jaime Garzón.  She first received death threats more than 10 years ago and has been constantly harassed by the Administrative Department of Security (DAS, the Colombian security service). She has had to go into exile three times, and her daughter has also received death threats.

A freelance Tanzanian reporter who contributes to the BBC World Service, Vicky Ntetema uncovered one of her country’s horrible secrets when she began to investigate the brutal killings of albinos and their families. Working undercover, she learned that witchdoctors were murdering albinos to dismember their bodies and sell potions made out of their hair, legs and arms.  Ntetema has received death threats since she started her reporting. She has twice left Tanzania for her safety. She now reports wearing hijab to disguise her identity and often travels with a security guard.

A Beijing-based Tibetan freelance writer and blogger for the site Invisible Tibet, Tsering Woeser is also a contributor to Radio Free Asia. For more than eight years, since the publication of her book Notes on Tibet, Woeser has been under constant scrutiny by Chinese authorities. Woeser lives in Beijing and reports about human rights abuses in Tibet, but her work is published only by media outside mainland China. Sources she has relied on for years will no longer speak to her for fear of retaliation; anyone who dares to meet with her is likely to be interrogated by police. Still, she remains determined to inform the world about the struggles of the Tibetan people.

Jila Baniyaghoob, freelance reporter and editor-in-chief of the website Kanoon Zanan Irani (Iranian Women Center), has fearlessly reported on government and social oppression, particularly as they affect women. She has been fired from several jobs because she refuses to censor the subject matter of her reporting and several of her media outlets have been closed by the government. The topics of her reporting make her a target of the Iranian government. She has been beaten, arrested and imprisoned numerous times.

Iryna Khalip, a reporter and editor in the Minsk bureau of Novaya Gazeta, has been a journalist for more than 15 years in Belarus, one of the most oppressive countries toward journalists in the world. After working at a succession of newspapers, only to see them closed by the government, she now works for one of the most independent newspapers in the former Soviet Union. Khalip has been arrested, subjected to all-night interrogations and beaten by police, who keep her under constant surveillance.

Agnes Taile has reported on human rights and press freedom, including unflinching stories on the ineffectiveness and corruption of government officials. In 2006, while she was a reporter for Sweet FM, Taile received threats demanding that she stop her pursuit of government corruption. She ignored the threats. Not long afterward, she was abducted from her home at knife point by three hooded men, then beaten and left for dead in a ravine. Her show was cancelled after the attack. After recovering, Taile was determined to keep working as a journalist and landed a new job with Canal 2 covering the northern provinces of Cameroon.

Aye Aye Win, a correspondent for the Associated Press in Myanmar, is one of the only women journalists in her country. Win works under the repressive military junta, so her movements are closely monitored by authorities. She has been called “the axe-handle of the foreign press” by other media outlets in Myanmar because she has helped open the door for foreign journalists to report on the country. Still, she risks her own safety to report.

Farida Nekzad is the managing editor and deputy director of Pajhwok Afghan News and vice president of the South Asia Media Commission. She frequently receives phone calls and email messages threatening her life. Despite working under tremendous pressure at a time when women journalists in particular are being threatened for their reporting in Afghanistan, Nekzad is committed to staying in her country to work toward a free press and greater equality for women journalists.