Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of Egypt’s Al-Dustour newspaper, has been awarded the 2008 Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) that honours an editor or publisher in the Arab region.
The prize, which is made in memory of Gebran Tueni, the Lebanese publisher and WAN Board Member who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut on December 12, 2005, was presented during a ceremony Saturday in recognition of Eissa’s commitment to freedom of the press, his courage, leadership, ambition and high managerial and professional standards.
In his acceptance remarks, Eissa called on journalists in the Arab world to band together to fight restrictions and to oppose what he called “the only war Arab rulers have ever agreed upon” - a fight against press freedom.
“All those whom you see scrambling, competing, calling one another’s names, quarrelling and disputing at summit meetings never come out with any agreement, except on the bottom line of fighting press freedom,” said Essa. “This is the only war Arab rulers have ever agreed upon. “The same ones who show hostility towards Israel or come to a peace settlement with her, are the same ones who enforce Islamic laws and ban the use of veil by females. They are the inheritor president and his successor, the king and the crown prince, the sultan and the sultanate, Their Excellencies and Highnesses, the military general and the medical doctor, the colonel and the sergeant. Every single ruler in the Arab World governs exclusively by issuing orders to bomb pens and to hound journalists,” he said.
The award was presented by Timothy Balding, CEO of WAN, who said: “The role you’ve played in ensuring the editorial integrity of Al-Dustour and in increasing its readership has been decisive. It has taken both courage and leadership to run a newspaper that addresses crucial, yet unreported or censored, issues. You have crossed many red lines, you have paid a high price for doing so, but you have stood firm in the defence of the right to free information in your country.”
Al-Dustour, founded in 1995, was closed by the Egyptian authorities from 1998 to 2005 after it published a letter from the militant group Gamaa Islamiya. Its circulation has grown from 50,000 when it resumed publishing, to 120,000 today, in large part because of Eissa’s leadership. Eissa remains determined to provide professional and quality coverage of events, despite censorship, indictments and court cases.
He was sentenced to two months in prison in September 2008 for “propagating false news and rumours causing a general security disturbance and harming the public interest” in connection with articles concerning the health of President Hosni Mubarak. He was pardoned by the President in October.
Eissa is currently appealing another conviction and is free on bail pending the outcome. In September 2007, Eissa, along with Adel Hammouda of the weekly Al-Fagr, Wael al-Abrashi of the weekly Soat al-Ommah, and Abdel Halim Kandeel of the weekly Al-Karama, each received one-year jail sentences for ‘defaming the president’.
Eissa and Al-Dustour journalist Sahar Zaki had earlier been sentenced to a year in prison for “insulting the president” and “spreading false rumours” for their April 2005 coverage of a legal case against President Mubarak. The prison sentence was dismissed on appeal in February 2007 and the two were fined 22,500 Egyptian Pounds (3,200 Euros).
