[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 21]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 30820]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                1999 INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARDS

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 17, 1999

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate this year's 
recipients of the 1999 International Press Freedom Awards, presented by 
the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
  CPJ was founded by American journalists in 1981 to defend the ``human 
and professional rights of journalists around the world.'' CPJ works to 
protect reporters who are threatened by authoritarian regimes and other 
foes of accurate, independent journalism. Its annual awards honor those 
journalists working under the most onerous of conditions.
  This year's honorees, who have been beaten, jailed, or had their 
lives threatened because of their work, will receive their awards at a 
ceremony in New York next week. I join CPJ in congratulating: Jesus 
Joel Diaz Hernandez, who is serving a four-year prison sentence in Cuba 
for starting an independent news agency; Baton Haxhiu, editor of 
Kosovo's leading independent newspaper, ``Koho Ditore,'' which he 
continued to publish from exile after eluding Serbian police; Jugnu 
Mohsin and Najam Sethi, publisher and editor of ``The Friday Times'' of 
Lahore, Pakistan--last spring, Sethi was beaten, abducted, and jailed 
after the paper published charges of government corruption; and Maria 
Cristina Caballerio, a reporter for Colombia's ``Semana,'' who received 
frequent death threats as a result of her work covering the country's 
civil war.
  Mr. Speaker, too often we take a free press for granted. CPJ and this 
year's honoree's remind us that press freedoms are vital to the 
functioning of democratic government and that journalists often risk 
their lives to assure that the rest of us know the truth.

                          ____________________