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Motivation for the awarding of the press freedom prize “city of Siena-isf” sixth edition
to the colleagues Selwa Zako and William Warda

10-27-2006 

This prize is dedicated first of all to the one hundred iraqi journalists that died from the beginning of the war and to the tenths of those that have vanished and no one remembers, commemorates or searches.
This is intended to be an acknowledgement for their job and courage. The courage and persistence in continuing to practice a profession that in human history has never been so dangerous like in this never ending iraqi tragedy.
This is the courage of those colleagues that allow us to have knowledge of what is happening in that country, behind the heavy curtain of daily menaces of the death squads, the financial and political manipulation, lifting voices that pass through the sound of weapons arriving to us and to the western media.
Behind every news and every image there is an iraqi colleague risking his life to discover it and send it to us.
We have chosen two colleagues that don’t belong to any of the principal factions that are fighting each other in this bloody civil war, offering the most balanced and objective view possible on the iraqi situation.
We have chosen two colleagues with a high cultural profile and professional history, always aimed towards a reserch of indipendence and autonomy from a repressive regime.
Selwa Zako is considered the dean of  iraqi journalism. At the end of the 1950’s she wanted to start a university carreer, but she was excluded because of her opposition to the Baathist regime. She then dedicated herself to journalism and started to work for “Al-Jumhuriya” (The Republic), where she was the only woman, and in the night for “Tariq- al- Shaab” (The way of the People) and then for “ Al-Fikr al-Jadid” (The New Thought), all comunist newspapers.
In 1979 Saddam Hussein’s regime started  a heavy repression at the end of which all non allined journals were closed. The comunists ones were slowly strangled through the progressive arrest of all journalists and printmakers. In the end only “Tariq al-Shaab” was left where Selwa and Safa al- Hafiz worked: they were arrested and Safa was killed in jail. Selwa Zako managed to survive and had to work as a printmaker and as a teacher in an international school in Baghdad.
After the fall of Saddam in Irak editorial pluralism flourished and Selwa was in the first line.  
Assistant director of Al Mada, the most important and cultured newspaper in the country, then editor-in-chief of Al Nahda, another strongly cultured newspaper, close to the movement of the arab renaissance and today editor-in-chief  of a magazine specialized in the media, Al Tawasul. Our colleagues is also member of the Iraqi Media and Communications Commission.
She summarizes the situation of the press in Irak as follows: “The fall of the regime opened the way to pluralism in information, a new experience for iraqi people, after thirty years of dictatorship. It looks like we all need a long re-organization to manage to use this space of freedom that surrounds us, journalists and members of the government alike” and she adds “liberal press is today the target of evident restrictions, such that in some districts it’s circulation is forbidden through the strenght of terrorism, not of the State. The same governative apparatus have started to limit tha activity of media operators and some of them are today under trial because of their opinion, in addition to being menaced by the most different factions active on the political scene and force to leave the country to save their lives”. Thank you, Selwa Zako, for your long and determined battle for the freedom of our job.
William Warda was born in 1961 in the city of Mosul. He has studied civil engineering in the University of Mosul but was forced to abandon his studies. Since he was young, in the eighties, he has joined the iraqi opposition movement against the dictatorship of the Baathist regime that ruled the country. Very young, at the beginning of the nineties he is in charge of the ADM  (Democratic Assirian Movement) for foreign relations. In the year 2000 he is editor-in-chief of the weekly Bahra (Light) and Ceo of Ashur TV, the satellite television that gives voice to the assirian minority that in Irak repreasents about one million citizen. Keeping alive the literature, the language and the culture of one of the most ancient civilizations in human history, are the main objectives of his editorial aim.
Always in those years, William Warda, becomes responsible of the Centre for Cultural and Media Relations of the AMD.
After 9th april 2003 (following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime) he is member of the High Commision for the Media that creates the first laws regarding the media in Irak, and until september 2006 he holds many position as supervisor and editor-in-chief for media close to the assirian movement, such as Ashur TV, Ashur Radio and some internet sites. He now works together with other journalists for the creation of an association for press freedom in Irak.
William Warda represents the future of iraqi journalism, a new generation that looks to indipendent press and wants to build a real autonomy not only from the State but also from politics.
But to reach this goal, which in the end is that of a complete democracy, Irak, its journalists and citizens, must conquer the some primary freedoms: existing, living and working freely.
William had to renounce to teaching because it was too much dangerous attending university every day and describes the life of a journalist in Irak today as follows: “To go and come back from the place where you work one must follow a different road every day, because you never know where and when you could be killed.  
When you are stopped at a checkpoint, you never know which identity document you should show, because you ignore which could save your life or condemn you to death. When you write an article you must weigh every word carefully, because a wrong word, a wrong opinion could cost your life”.
Thank you William for remebering us with your courage of going every day to your working place, for your capacity of watching the future behind the horizon of this violence unleashed over Irak by careless acts. And thank you both for being here today to remember us the dignity of our job and the value of principles like freedom, indipendence and democracy. For us journalists that of being free we think should be first of all a duty because there is no real democracy without free information. But for the citizens, beginning with your people, massacred fisrt by dictatorship and today by a fierce war, we believe that a free information is something for which we must all fight.

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