Lebanon: Kassir awards honour courage of 3 journalists

EU delegation head says regional media repression intensified

At least 60 journalists were killed worldwide last year, said the head of an EU delegation to Lebanon in a conference on Tuesday. Almost half lost their lives in the Middle East.

Angelina Eichhorst also spotlighted "intimidation and arbitrary arrests" of journalists in her opening remarks for the Samir Kassir awards ceremony for freedom of the press, held in Beirut.

"The freedom of the press is a priority for the EU," continued Eichhorst, explaining the importance of the prizes awarded for the last ten years by the EU and the Samir Kassir Foundation to journalists in the Middle Eastern and North African regions. The awards are named after one of the most reknown Lebanese editorialists, killed June 2, 2005, in an attack that put an end to his efforts against Syrian occupation and influence in Lebanon. Ten years later, the perpetrators continue to go unpunished.

The award winners this year are as follows:
- for opinion pieces, the winner is Ayman al Ahmad, a 31-year-old Syrian who lives in Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey that has become a base for the operations of humanitarian organizations in Syria and activist opposition groups;
- for the investigative journalism, the winner is the Egyptian journalist Hisham Mannaa, 25;
- for audiovisual reporting, the prize goes to the Palestinian-Syrian journalist Mohammad Nour Ahmad, 33, for his short film Blu, which recounts the role of music in keeping hope alive during the desperation of war by spotlighting events in the life of a pianist from Yarmuk, in the periphery of southern Damascus.

The winners were chosen among 158 journalists who entered the competition. The number of journalists who have participated in the competition since the Samir Kassir Award was founded ten years ago number over 1,500. "This year is dedicated to all the journalists who work, with courage, in this region, inspired by the figure of Samir Kassir, in an environment characterized by a growing negative trend toward repression of freedom of the press," said Kassir. The president of the Samir Kassir Foundation, Gisele Khoury - the ex-partner of the murdered journalist - said that the commitment for freedom and for human rights will never cease to exist as long as professionals continue to exist like those who were awarded.