Photo award for Georgia coverage

Earlier this week, the Swedish Dagens Nyheter news photographer Lars Lindqvist won second price in the World Press Photo competition for his photo coverage of the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008. His pictures, in my view, give a face to human conflict that accounts for war - ancient and modern: tragedy and drama, waiting and action.

World Press Photo was founded in the Netherlands in 1955 as a non-commercial organization with the purpose of supporting and forwarding the cause of professional news' photographers with the world as their field of work. The organization arranges an annual photo competition, which has formed a basis for the encouragement of photo journalism. Lindqvist won second prize in the General News Stories cathegory.

Global Voices wins Anvil of Freedom Award

The Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has honored Global Voices Online, an online initiative of Reuters and Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as the 2009 recipient of the Anvil of Freedom Award. This award is given in recognition of Global Voices Online's outstanding journalistic efforts in providing opportunities for people to read and respond to news from a variety of citizen and professional journalists, in several languages, using the best of blogging technologies. Global Voices Online Co-Founder Ethan Zuckerman received the award at the University of Denver on Thursday, February 5, 2009.

As a contributor to Global Voices, I am very happy to announce the above news that our organization receives recognition for our work. In a new media landscape, Global Voices serves a next to unique function in proffering a digest of alternative and citizen journalism and events, which are otherwise poorly covered by mainstream western media. However, what makes my heart beat with joy over Global Voices is how people all over the world succeed in cooperating constructively and be stimulated by each other's ideas and contributions without meeting each other more than perhaps once a year. So, in my view the various awards that Global Voices receives is little in comparison to the daily reward of cooperating with gifted and open-minded people all over the world in a mutual effort to give voice to those previously bereft of free speech and thus contribute to the growth of a global open society in its fight against intolerance and repression.

Links:
Estlow Center honors Global Voices with 2009 Anvil of Freedom Award
Blog site gets Anvil award
Global Voices Wins Anvil of Freedom Award 2009
Estlow Center honors Global Voices with Anvil of Freedom Award

Belarus: HR-Activists Get Swedish Awards

On Monday, the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund announced that this year's human rights' awards both go to Belarus. Thus, Tatiana Ravyaka receives the 2006 Anna Lindh Prize and Alyaksandr Byalyatski the Per Anger Prize. Both prize winners represent the Belarusian Human Rights Center Viasna.

Byalyatski, the leader of Viasna, has for a decade supported human rights in Belarus by offering legal aid to the thousands of people that have been repressed by Lukashenka's regime. He is awarded the Per Anger Prize for his "brave struggle for the rights of the individual in the fight against oppression of human rights."

Tatiana Revyaka, also of Viasna, receives the 2006 Anna Lindh Prize for her "committment, empathy and persistence in disclosing wrongs and supporting and advocating the oppressed. She courageously defies political oppression and spreads knowledge of an alternative society in which the rights of the individual are inviolable."

The Anna Lindh Memorial Prize was founded in honour of former Swedish minister of foreign Affairs, Mrs. Anna Lindh, who was murdered by a madman during a political campaign in 2003. The Per Anger Prize is in honour of ambassador Per Anger, Raoul Wallenberg's closest associate in salvaging jews in Hungary during WWII. The prizes will be presented to Revyaka and Byalyatski at a ceremony in Stockholm on 14 june.