Issue 64 June 1998
The Olof Palme Prize, 1997
OLOF PALME PRIZE
The 1997 Olof Palme Prize went to Salima Ghezali, Chief Editor of the Algerian weekly magazine "La Nation" for her courage in continuing to publish her objective and meticulous accounts of the violence and brutality against the people of Algeria, in spite of constant danger to her own life.
Salami Ghezali (a professor in French literature) founded the Algerian movement for Women's Rights, publishing the movement's newsletter "Nyssa" before becoming the Chief Editor of "La Nation" in 1994. "La Nation" has frequently been prevented from being published and has for the past year been banned altogether. Salima Ghezali has not seen her two daughters for several years and has been living under constant threats to her life, moving from place to place with no fixed address.
Since 1993, more than 60 journalists have been murdered in Algeria and, according to her own research, some 100,000 people have been killed since 1992, when the Algerian elections were disrupted as the Islamic Liberation Front looked to be winning.
Every week about one thousand people are being killed, she maintains, many of whom are women and children. The Government is blaming these killings on the Islamic fundamentalists but Salami Ghezali is convinced that the Algerian Army too has death squads.
In 1996 Salima Ghezali received the Sakharov Prize and was in 1997 elected Journalist of the Year by the World Press Review.
The Olof Palme Commemoration Fund was instituted the 3rd March 1986 by Olof Palme's family and the Swedish Social Democratic Party in order to promote "international understanding and mutual security". Since 1987 the Fund has distributed about Skrl4 million to organisations or individuals whose work has exemplified the aims of the Commemoration Fund.
For more information on Salami Ghezali or the Olof Palme Prize contact:
Olof Palme's Memorial Fund, Box 3221, S-103 64 Stockholm, Sweden.
Many to Many
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