Hadi Abdullah wins 2016 RSF-TV5 Monde Press Freedom Prize

The 2016 Reporters Without Borders (RSF)TV5 Monde Press Freedom Prize will be awarded to Syrian reporter Hadi Abdullah, the Chinese news website 64Tianwang, and Chinese citizen journalists Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu at a ceremony in Strasbourg on 8 November 2016.

  • The ceremony will be held as part of the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg for the fourth year running, with laureates, politicians and media figures in attendance.
  • TV5 Monde journalist Philippe Dessaint will host the event, while the well-known Turkish journalist Can Dündar, the former editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper and 2015 RSF Prize laureate, will be guest of honour.
  • Hadi Abdullah is being awarded the prize in the journalist category. He is a 29-year-old freelance reporter who has braved many dangers to cover the war in Syria, entering high-risk areas where few colleagues venture in order to film and to enable civil society’s actors to speak to the outside world.
  • He has had many brushes with death and was briefly kidnapped by the Al-Nusra Front last January.
  • His cameraman, Khaled al-Issa, was killed in June by an explosive device left outside the home they shared, and Abdullah himself was badly injured by the blast.
  • In the citizen journalist category, the prize is going to Lu Yuyu and his partner, Li Tingyu, two Chinese citizen journalists who were arrested on 15 June and were held incommunicado for more than three weeks before being able speak to lawyers.

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