The Index on Censorship Book Award
The book Slave by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis gives an account of modern day’s slavery telling the story of Mende herself who was abducted in Sudan at the age of 12 and were held in slavery for 7 years. She managed to escape after being passed on by her master to a relative in London.
The Index on Censorship Film Award
Amandla! by Lee Hirsch tells the story of black South African freedom music and reveals the central role it played in the long struggle against apartheid. The film focuses on how music was used to circumvent other forms of state censorship.
The Index on Censorship/Guardian Hugo Young Award (Journalism)
Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalist Kaveh Golestan often risked his own life to report about events nobody else covered like the gas attacks on Kurdish towns in Iraq or the situation in Iran during the war with Iraq. He was killed by a landmine in Northern Iraq in 2003.
The Index on Censorship Whistleblower AwardÂ
Satyendra Kumar Dubey was a senior engineer working on the giant Golden Quadrilateral road project in the Bihar province in India. His murder on 27 November 2003 was probably connected with his anti-corruption campaign.
The Index on Censorship Music Award
Despite criticism conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian philosopher Edward Said created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a youth orchestra whose musicians cross the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Its performances in Arab and Western countries have been a huge success.
http://www.danielbarenboim.com/index.html
Index Special Award
Between 1976 and 1985 Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona in the Negev desert. He was kidnapped, tried in secret on charges of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 year’s imprisonment for exposing Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons to the press. On 21 April 2004 he was released conditionally, since then fighting for the right to leave the country.
Censor of the Year
From the Patriot Act to Guantanamo, as Attorney general of the US, John Ashcroft set the standard of repression that is not only an affront to liberty in the US, but a negative model authoritarian governments throughout the world are following.
