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Cypriot journalist receives IWMF courage in journalism award

The International Women’s Media Foundation has awarded Sevgül Uludağ, an investigative reporter for Yeniduzen newspaper in Cyprus with the Courage in Journalism Award.

di Redazione

 

Uludag has been a journalist for nearly three decades. In 2002, she began writing about missing people and mass graves in Cyprus. Her reporting started a public debate about the issue of missing people and mass graves and led to official searches and exhumations. Uludag lives in the northern part of divided Cyprus but through her reporting attempts to ease the segregation between the Greek and Turkish communities. In doing so, she has faced many obstacles, including death threats and violent attacks. In April 2003, the daily paper Volkan, mouthpiece of the nationalist movement, pronounced threats of murder against Uludag and called upon readers to “cut off the tongue of Sevgul Uludag.” But neither hate campaigns nor psychological terror keep Uludag from publishing her articles.

“I am pleased that the work I have been carrying out for years under very difficult and threatening conditions is recognized, because so often it has been hard to work under threat.”

She also said: “Sometimes you are all alone. Even those around you will tell you not to do what you are doing, to be careful, to quit. However, there are jobs that need to be done, articles that need to be written. You go on. Sometimes many people support you, sometimes nobody does.”

Uludag also said that these kinds of international awards help to increase a journalist’s international visibility and to expand the web of relationships: “In the end, it is not the award that makes the journalist; this is not my first international award and I would carry on being a journalist whether I was awarded or not, but each time you receive an award it reenergizes you, it lifts your morale.”

Find out more

www.iwmf.org

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