Index on Censorship announces 2024 Freedom of Expression award shortlist

4 Nov 2024 | Awards, Fellowship 2024, News and features, Press Releases

Today, Index on Censorship announces the shortlist for its annual Freedom of Expression Award. The shortlist of 13 organisations and individuals from nine countries across five continents, highlights how free expression can be protected at a time of growing instability, authoritarianism and censorship. Each nominee covers diverse and critical issues such as the treatment of political prisoners in conflict zones, empowering citizen journalism and accountability, championing independent journalism, defending the rights of women and the LGBTQ communities, opposing war propaganda and authoritarianism, celebrating local languages, cultures and identities and countering disinformation.

Divided into three categories: Arts, Campaigning and Journalism, the annual award is an opportunity to celebrate the courage and creativity of the journalists, artists, campaigners and dissidents who, against all odds and at times facing threats of persecution, harassment, imprisonment or death, speak out and speak up to defend human rights and democracy.

The short list announced today is:

Arts

  • Atena Farghadani (Iran) – An imprisoned cartoonist and visual artist who has used her art to defend human rights and democracy in Iran.
  • Jota Ramos (Colombia) – An Afro-Colombian musician currently under house arrest after ongoing threats and persecution for his music and campaigning.
  • Aleksandra Skochilenko (Russia) – An anti-war musician, artist and campaigner who was imprisoned for her creative opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Campaigning

  • Diala Ayesh (Palestinian Territories) – A lawyer and prison advocate who has campaigned for the rights of prisoners in Israel and Palestine, who was detained by Israeli authorities and remains incarcerated.
  • Fundamedios (Ecuador) – A media freedom monitoring watchdog working to protect journalists and media workers across Latin and South America.
  • Kuchu Times (Uganda) – A media and campaigning organisation working to protect and support the LGBTQ community amid increased legal persecution.
  • Tanele Maseko (Eswatini) – The widow of murdered human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko has faced intimidation and threats continuing his legacy, fighting for justice and defending human rights for all.

Journalism

  • Chutima Sidasathian (Thailand) – A journalist and citizen advocate has faced a litany of legal threats for her work exposing financial wrongdoing in rural communities across the country.
  • Nasim Soltanbeygi (Iran) – A journalist who reported on the Women, Life, Freedom protests and women’s rights issue who has been imprisoned and persecuted for her reporting.

 

Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship said:

Judging these awards was a truly humbling experience. I am always overwhelmed by the bravery of our award nominees and no more so than this year. The march of authoritarianism has seemingly picked up pace across the globe but it’s heartening to know that everywhere there are still people willing to fight for what is right, even if they end up paying an extreme price in doing so. I look forward to celebrating the winners later on this year and want to say my own thanks to everyone on the shortlist – you are all inspiring and make the world better. 

Sir Trevor Phillips OBE, the Chair of Index on Censorship said:

It’s always one of the hardest moments of the year – we are always faced with candidates for the awards who are talented, impactful and courageous. It’s humbling – but always worthwhile because we know from the dictators’ regular annoyance at the winners that they really make a difference.

The Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award, established in 2001, has long championed those who have risked everything for the right to speak out and defend democracy and human rights. Previous winners include the imprisoned Iranian rapper, Toomaj Salehi; the Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai; the global whistleblowing platform, Wikileaks; the Turkish artist, Zehra Dogan; Honduran investigative journalist, Wendy Funes and many others.

This year’s shortlist demonstrates the creative, courageous and diverse voices opposing authoritarianism and silence. The winners will be announced on 20 November at a ceremony in London. The jury panel for the 2024 awards is made up of Baroness Hollick OBE; Ziyad Marar, President of Global Publishing at Sage; Sir Trevor Phillips OBE, chair of Index on Censorship; Ben Preston, Culture, Arts and Books Editor of The Times & Sunday Times; Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship.

ENDS

Media contact:

Index on Censorship is a non-profit organisation that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide, including by publishing work by censored writers and artists and monitoring threats to free speech. We lead global advocacy campaigns to protect artistic, academic, media and digital freedom to strengthen the participatory foundations of modern democratic societies. www.indexoncensorship.org

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Death of a storyteller

5 Jul 2023 | News and features, Russia, Ukraine

They shot the children’s poet in the head. Two bullets from a Makharov, the Russian army handgun, his grave identified, his voice stilled. Until, that is, Victoria Amelina turned up at the Izium home of the murdered poet, Volodymyr Vakulenko. Gentle, calm, dogged, Victoria had stopped work as a novelist to become a war crimes investigator, her mission to listen to Ukraine’s bereaved: “That it is not like ‘this happened’ and nobody asks them about it.”

She found Vakulenko’s father, crushed by grief, and over the course of a long conversation, his memory unlocked and he said that his son had told him that he had buried his diary near the cherry tree in the family’s garden. They dug and dug.

Nothing.

And then Victoria, on impulse, opened up the earth a little distance from the tree and they found the dead poet’s diary, wrapped in water-proof plastic, breaking the silence. The diary told of Russian occupation, of a tank squatting outside in the street, the creeping sense of dread, his arrest, release – and then they came for him one last time. But not before he had buried his words by the cherry tree.

Victoria understood that the best stories are the ones that power and money do not want told. That was last year.

In late June Victoria was sitting outside on the terrace at the Ria pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, about thirty miles from Bakhmut. The Ria is an institution, a sweet hiding hole where journalists, aid workers, soldiers and local families unwind from the horrors of the frontline. Driven by my fixer in Ukraine, Dima Kovalchuk, Victoria was escorting Colombian journalists, Héctor Abad, Sergio Jaramillo and Catalina Gómez around the war zone. Victoria was doing her best to shine a light on the Kremlin’s dark nonsense. Too many people in the global south have bought into the Russian lie but not these South Americans.

Dima told me: “the awning above is see-through and I saw a shadow overhead, it was the missile, then this intense explosion.”

Jaramillo explained to the Financial Times: “I was sitting right next to Victoria. We had just finished a day in the field, talking to people about the Russian invasion. As the food was brought to us, I bent down to pick up a napkin and, at that moment, the missile struck. Victoria, who had been sitting upright, was badly hit at the back of the neck… the whole room fell to pieces and time stopped.”

Dima said that Victoria never recovered from her head injury. The rest of the team were lightly injured. Thirteen people died, including two fourteen-year-old twins; fifty people were injured. Firing a cruise missile at a pizza restaurant packed with civilians was yet another Russian war crime.

Victoria was born in Lviv, moved to Canada when she was a teenager, worked in IT, got bored with that and became a full-time writer. Her first novel, Fall Syndrome, was about the Maidan revolution, her second, Dom’s Dream Kingdom, established her international reputation. She won the Joseph Conrad Literary Award and was short-listed for the European Union Prize for Literature. Before the big war she set up a literary festival in New York, a village not far from Bakhmut, and a second in Kramatorsk. Her poetry was spare and bleak:

Sirens

Air-raid sirens across the country

It feels like everyone is brought out

For execution

But only one person gets targeted

Usually the one at the edge

This time not you; all clear

I met Victoria once, at a café in Kyiv, this spring. She recognised my silly orange hat and we talked about working together, one day, on a war crimes investigation but our schedules didn’t work out and that never happened. There was a still beauty about her spirit that is haunting, an echo from a friend, calling out the big lie.

I cannot believe they have silenced her.

I cannot believe that she is dead.

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