When 500 investigative reporters from all over the world meet in October in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv they hope to see their Turkish colleagues Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik at the award ceremony, where they are invited to present the Daniel Pearl Award and Global Shining Light Award.
Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik are two leading investigative reporters in Turkey who are presently incarcerated because of their journalistic work. Both of them are award winning and respected journalists and Turkish journalists have for some time campaigned to get them released. The Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) hopes that the Turkish authorities will react to both national and international arguments for their release, so they will be able to attend the 7th GIJC in Kyiv.
Both the Daniel Pearl Award and the Global Shining Light Award go to journalists who have done in-depth-reporting in extremely difficult and/or dangerous environments.
“GIJC invited the two Turkish colleagues because investigative reporting is under heavy pressure in many countries”, says the Danish journalist Henrik Kaufholz, who is head of secretariat for the GIJC. “Because of that it’s more important than ever that a global network of journalists both monitors and supports colleagues who run into trouble despite working according to international standards for good journalism”.
GIJC is a biannual event organised by a global network of investigative reporters, who has asked the Danish project “Scoop” to prepare the conference. More about the conference here: www.GIJC2011.org.
