FROM LIZ ALLEN AT THE NZ SOCIETY OF AUTHORS


BOOKNEWS
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NEWS

Ncube, Dink and Politkovskaya win 2007 IPA Freedom Prize
Trevor Ncube, chief executive of the "only private and critical newspapers still published in Zimbabwe," and journalists Hrant Dink and Anna Politkovskaya, who were killed as a result of their work, are this year's winners of the International Publishers Association (IPA) Freedom Prize.
Ncube was honoured for his support of free expression and his courage as publisher of "The Zimbabwe Independent", "The Standard" and "The Mail and Guardian". "Despite repeated threats of violence and attempts to strip him of his Zimbabwean citizenship, Trevor Ncube's newspapers have persistently continued to expose corruption and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, thus encouraging healthy dissent and criticism," said Ana Cabanellas, president of IPA.
This year, IPA is also honouring Hrant Dink and Anna Politkovskaya with a special Freedom Prize to "celebrate their courage, their humanity, and their witness." Previously convicted for "insulting Turkishness," Dink was editor of the Armenian-Turkish weekly "Agos", which provided a voice for the Armenian community. He was shot dead in front of his Istanbul office in January.
The IPA Freedom Prize will be presented during the opening ceremony of the 2nd Cape Town Book Fair on 15 June 2007. For more on this event, whose theme for 2007 is "More than Black on White", see:
http://www.capetownbookfair.com

Mizzima News takes IPIs Free Media Pioneer Award
Hats off to Mizzima News! The Burmese news agency whose head office was recently raided by the Indian authorities is this year's winner of the International Press Institute's (IPI) Free Media Pioneer Award.
A small group of Burmese journalists in exile started up Mizzima in 1998 to tell the world what was going on in closed-off Burma. Today, it has a head office in New Delhi, India, a news bureau in Thailand, and a staff of 30 in India and Thailand, as well as in Bangladesh, China, and even Burma. The group is also an IFEX interim member.
That Mizzima exists at all has been no small feat, considering the wrath it has faced from the Burmese junta. In 2005, for example, Burma's military government pressured the Thai government to relocate Burmese refugees, including journalists, to camps near the Thai-Burmese border, so that it could deny them access to phone lines and the Internet. The next year, the junta clamped down on anybody providing information to foreign news outlets - providing special training to its security forces to identify and arrest foreign media "informants" and introducing phone tapping facilities.
Editor Sein Win will accept the award during the IPI World Congress in Istanbul this weekend.
Visit these links:- Mizzima News: http://www.mizzima.com and http://www.mizzima.tv - IPI: http://www.freemedia.at (Source IFEX news)

Paul Smith elected President of the NZ Society of Authors
At the Society’s AGM on Saturday 12th May outgoing President Chris Else Author and journalist Paul Smith has been elected President of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc).
Smith, a former media commentator, has worked for leading publications here and overseas and is the author of six non-fiction books. He served on the TVNZ Board for four years and is now on the Board of New Zealand on Air.
He has tutored Auckland University's non-fiction writing schools for the past 15 years and is a non-fiction mentor privately, and for the Society.
He is also the founder of the babyboomer website <http://www.kiwiboomers.co.nz/>