REAL COURAGE: Four Who Risk
All
ZELJKO
KOPANJA
Zeljko Kopanja, co-founder and editor
of Nezavisne Novine, Bosnia-Herzegovina's largest Serb
daily, survived a 1999 assassination attempt that cost him his
legs. Undaunted, Kopanja continues to work, calling the idea of
abandoning his craft "treasonous." In covering war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Kopanja faces opposition from criminal groups controlled by the
secret police, economic pressures, and an unstable government.
In its five years of publication, Nezavisne Novine has
seen its journalists threatened, distribution thwarted, and vendors
jailed. Kopanja says these obstacles don't deter him, but rather
heighten the importance of his work. "By expressing the truth,"
Kopanja says, "we can help my country become one of love and not
hatred."
-- Chris DelGrosso
MODESTE
MUTINGA
Modeste Mutinga, publisher and co-founder
of the Democratic Republic of Congo's only independent daily newspaper,
Le Potentiel, routinely takes the government to task for
its corruption and injustice. For this work, he has been harassed,
assaulted, and arrested. "In a country without democracy and without
a proper government, journalists find themselves working with
the opposition," says Mutinga. "To go against the government is
seen as subversive." Mutinga has built his career practicing such
"subversion." He founded several local press freedom groups and
launched a printing company to insure distribution of his paper
and other independent newspapers. Mutinga hopes his efforts give
voice to what he calls "the nation's silent majority."
-- Chris DelGrosso
MASHALLAH
SHAMSOLVAEZIN
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin has been
the editor of several leading reformist publications in Iran --
Jameah, Tous, Neshat, and Asr-e-Azadegan
-- which were all successively banned. He is currently serving
a thirty-month sentence in Iran's Evin prison for allegedly offending
Islamic principles. His crime: publishing an article criticizing
capital punishment in Iran. Shamsolvaezin had been targeted for
years for "pushing the margins of freedom in Iran," says Joel
Campagna, CPJ's Middle East and Africa coordinator. With Shamsolvaezin
and other reformist journalists imprisoned "the authorities have
effectively eliminated the reformist press which has been so essential
in triggering one of the greatest democratic debates in Iranian
history," Campagna says.
-- Kate Pinsley
STEVEN
GAN
Steven Gan, co-founder and editor
of Malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com), was fed up with
Malaysia's restrictions on the media. Gan had been a print journalist,
and faced intimidation and imprisonment for writing investigative
articles that defied government controls. So, understanding that
Malaysia does not censor the Internet for fear of dampening investment,
Gan decided to go virtual. "I was unhappy with the sorry state
of our mass media," he says. "I wanted to create a source of alternative
information. The Internet is a medium that can help to break the
government monopoly of information. People are able to see that
there is other news that is not being reported."
-- Soo Kim
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