The Human Rights Press Awards for Asia yesterday hosted its annual ceremony in Taiwan for the first time, celebrating journalism and human rights in a nation ranked best in Asia for press freedom.
Taiwan boasts freedom of the press and has become an important hub for international media, being home to 176 correspondents from 86 media outlets from 22 countries as of last month, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said at the event in Taipei.
However, authoritarian regimes are constantly attempting to influence the nation’s media environment and democracy, and polarize Taiwanese society through disinformation campaigns and propaganda, Tsai said.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
It takes all sectors of society to act together to combat disinformation with timely and transparent clarification, research on authoritarian information manipulation and media literacy lessons, she said.
“Taiwan will continue to stand up for democracy, freedom and human rights,” she said.
Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club president Thompson Chau (周浩霖) called on the government to “remain committed to press freedom, provide more access and ease regulations on foreign media workers.”
The winners and runners-up this year were announced on Thursday last week — to mark World Press Freedom Day the following day.
The organizers — Human Rights Watch, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, and the foreign correspondents’ clubs in Taiwan and Thailand — present the awards to “increase respect for people’s basic rights and to focus attention on threats to those freedoms.”
The awards were given in seven categories: Investigative Writing (English), Investigative Writing (Chinese), Photography, Multimedia, Documentary Video, Podcast and Newsroom in Exile, with the final two being new additions this year.
Winners included the Guardian , which earned the Investigative Writing (English) award for its reporting on alleged trafficking of workers at Amazon.com warehouses in Saudi Arabia; and Singapore-based Initium Media, which won the Chinese-
language award; and al-Jazeera, which won in the Multimedia category for its “If I die, I die: Pakistan’s death-trap route to Europe” report.
Zan Times and Frontier Myanmar — which was also honored in the Podcast category — won in the Newsroom in Exile category for their “Despair is settling in: Female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan” and “Religious minorities persecuted in Myanmar” reports.
In the Photography category, Agence France-Presse won for its images of women fighting Myanmar’s junta.
In the Documentary Video category, BBC Chinese and Deutsche Welle were recognized for their films on anti-extradition bill protesters in Hong Kong and an elite police unit in Bangladesh.
“In an era in which rising authoritarianism generates autocratic leaders and mass disinformation, the role of journalists in exposing the truth is more critical than ever,” Human Rights Watch executive director Tirana Hassan said.
Many winners “are examples of brave journalism from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Myanmar, places where reporting has become increasingly difficult and dangerous,” Chau said, adding that “Taiwan is an extraordinary place for a growing number of Asia-focused correspondents to live and work.”
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
GLOBAL ISSUE: If China annexes Taiwan, ‘it will not stop its expansion there, as it only becomes stronger and has more force to expand further,’ the president said China’s military and diplomatic expansion is not a sole issue for Taiwan, but one that risks world peace, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that Taiwan would stand with the alliance of democratic countries to preserve peace through deterrence. Lai made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). “China is strategically pushing forward to change the international order,” Lai said, adding that China established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched the Belt and Road Initiative, and pushed for yuan internationalization, because it wants to replace the democratic rules-based international
RELEASED: Ko emerged from a courthouse before about 700 supporters, describing his year in custody as a period of ‘suffering’ and vowed to ‘not surrender’ Former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was released on NT$70 million (US$2.29 million) bail yesterday, bringing an end to his year-long incommunicado detention as he awaits trial on corruption charges. Under the conditions set by the Taipei District Court on Friday, Ko must remain at a registered address, wear a GPS-enabled ankle monitor and is prohibited from leaving the country. He is also barred from contacting codefendants or witnesses. After Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), posted bail, Ko was transported from the Taipei Detention Center to the Taipei District Court at 12:20pm, where he was fitted with the tracking
RSS