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Khashoggi awarded 2019 Golden Pen of Freedom
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Saudi filmmaker Safa al Ahmad receiving the award on behlalf of the Khashoggi family from World Editors’ Forum President David Callaway yesterday
Murdered Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi was awarded WAN-IFRA’s highest honour yesterday for furthering the cause of press freedom.
Dave Callaway, World Editors Forum President, awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom Award to Mr. Khashoggi at the World News Media Congress in Glasgow, Scotland. Saudi journalist and filmmaker, Safa al Ahmad, accepted the award on behalf of Jamal Khashoggi’s family.
“When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?”
These were the words of Jamal Khashoggi in his first column for The Washington Post two years ago, after going into self-imposed exile in the U.S. after revealing he’d been ordered to “shut up” by Saudi authorities.
Despite his enormous love for his homeland, he could not bring himself to ignore where it was going. He continued to speak out, and it cost him his life.
Mr. Khashoggi rose through the ranks of the Saudi media, and in 2003 was named editor-in-chief of Al-Watan paper. But he only lasted two months before he was dismissed for publishing a column criticising the country’s religious police.
He advocated for freedom of speech in his country, and women’s rights. Soon he was in exile in the U.S., and the horrible events in October 2018 in Istanbul are a tragic history we all know too well.
In his final column for The Post, published after his death, Khashoggi extended his criticisms further, writing that “Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Mr. Callaway said Khashoggi’s story is repulsive and terrifying, but simply an extreme version of the threats, oppression, and violence used daily by those who seek to shut down free media and transparency in the Middle East.
Brushing these crimes under the carpet and moving on to the next deal will simply give these oppressors the impunity they need to grow bolder.
“At the World Editor’s Forum, we stand for a united effort among the global media to hold tyrants and governments accountable for their actions to suppress free speech and inhibit the growth of free societies for all their people,” he said.
- Courtesy blog.wan-ifra.org