April
14, 2008
Mexican Investigative Reporter Wins UN Press Freedom Prize
UN News Service
A Mexican
reporter who has been a target of death threats, sabotage and police harassment because of her work uncovering prostitution
and child pornography networks was designated the laureate of a press freedom prize by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO).
The Director-General of UNESCO, Koďchiro Matsuura, will award the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to Lydia Cacho Ribeiro in a ceremony to be held on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May, in Maputo,
Mozambique.
A freelance reporter based in Cancun, Mexico, Ms. Cacho is a contributor to the daily
newspaper La Voz del Caribe, frequently covering organized crime and corruption.
In 2006, she reported on the violent death of hundreds of young women in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez.
The jury of 14 professional journalists and editors from all over the world was impressed
by Ms. Cacho’s courage and persistence, according to Joe Thloloe, jury president and Press Ombudsman of the Press Council
of South Africa.
“For me, a journalist who knows the antagonistic environment in which he or she
operates and continues to do the right thing by keeping readers, listeners or viewers informed about their society deserves
recognition for their contribution to freedom of expression around the world,” Mr. Thloloe said. “Lydia Cacho
is such a laureate.”
The $25,000 prize, financed by the Cano and Ottaway family foundations, is named after
Guillermo Cano, the Colombian newspaper publisher assassinated in 1987 for denouncing the activities of powerful drug barons
in his country.
The prize has previously been received by the following laureates: Anna Politkovskaya
(Russian Federation, 2007), May Chidiac (Lebanon, 2006), Cheng Yizhong, (China, 2005), Raúl Rivero (Cuba, 2004), Amira Hass
(Israel, 2003), Geoffrey Nyarota (Zimbabwe, 2002), U Win Tin (Myanmar, 2001), Nizar Nayyouf (Syria, 2000), Jesús Blancornelas
(Mexico, 1999), Christina Anyanwu (Nigeria, 1998), and Gao Yu (China, 1997).
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United
Nations News Service, 9 April 2008
