Journalism Is Not a Crime

Where Is Dawit Isaak?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Dawit Isaak, the Eritrean-Swedish journalist and playwright, was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2017 today in Jakarta, Indonesia. Today is World Press Freedom Day, a global United Nations commemoration, and Isaak was not present for the UNESCO ceremony.

Dawit Isaak has been held prisoner in Eritrea since September 2001. His whereabouts and his condition are unknown.

In June 2016, in a rare interview with France’s RFI (Radio France Internationale), Eritrea’s Foreign Minister, Osman Saleh, spoke with RFI’s Anthony Lattier about Eritrea’s “political prisoners,” and he specifically revealed that Dawit Isaak is still alive.

It was the first official Eritrean acknowledgement that Isaak is alive since 2009, when the nation’s president, Isaias Afwerki, ominously told a Swedish journalist that Eritrea “knows what to do with” Isaak and others “of his kind.”
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For Shawkan: One More Month

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A journalist’s job is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Although Shawkan is approaching his forty-fourth month in jail, a court in Egypt today postponed the continuing trial of Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the Egyptian photojournalist who goes by the name “Shawkan,” until Tuesday, May 9. One more month.

Shawkan’s ongoing story, with its staggered month-by-month steps, is one of the denial of basic human rights by a nation allied with Western governments, but it also has been a story of many citizens stepping up and making certain that Shawkan’s story is heard. Both stories are worth knowing.

Shawkan is one of twenty-five journalists jailed in Egypt, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

For those unaware of Shawkan’s story, I recently wrote the following background article:
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For Shawkan, Another Delay

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A journalist’s job is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

* * * *
The next hearing in the ongoing trial of Mahmoud Abu Zeid (photo at top), an Egyptian photojournalist who goes by the name “Shawkan,” will be Saturday, April 8, it was learned this morning.

Shawkan’s ongoing story, with its staggered month-by-month steps, is one of the denial of basic human rights by a nation allied with Western governments, but it also has been a story of many citizens stepping up and making certain that Shawkan’s story is heard. Both stories are worth knowing.

For those unaware of Shawkan’s story, I recently wrote the following background article:
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