Index on Censorship Award winners 2001

Most Courageous Defence of Free Expression Award

Mashallah Shamsolvaezin is a prominent Iranian journalist and press rights activist. In April 2000 he was sentenced to 30 months in jail for ‘insulting Islamic values’ after criticising Iran’s capital punishment practices in public. He was released on bail before finishing his sentence. The newspapers he was editing were banned between 1998 and 2000.

Best Circumvention of Censorship

Lauri Cranor, Avi Rubin and Marc Waldman invented the Publius Publishing System that is highly resistant to censorship and provides publishers with a high degree of anonymity.

http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~waldman/publius/publius.pdf

International Whistleblower of the Year

Grigory Pasko, a former naval officer and journalist with the Russian Navy’s newspaper, was imprisoned in 1997 for exposing the illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Sea of Japan in his investigative reports. Since his release in 2003, he is campaigning for human rights and the protection of the environment.

Award for Services to Censorship

For prosecuting whistleblowers under the Official Secrets Act, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) was given this ironic award.