Imprisoned Turkish journalists invited to global conference

Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, imprisoned investigative reporters in Turkey, have been invited to present the Daniel Pearl Award and the Global Shining Light Award at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kyiv, Ukraine in October.

Sener and Sik, two of Turkey’s leading investigative journalists, are currently incarcerated because of their work. Turkish journalists have been campaigning for some time to get them released.  Senar and Sik are both award-winning and respected reporters.

The global conference, to be held Oct. 13 through Oct. 16, 2011,  is expected to attract at least 500 investigative journalists from all over the world and conference organizers hope that the Turkish authorities will listen to both national and international arguments for the release of the journalists. The awards are presented at a ceremony on Sunday Oct. 16.

Both the Daniel Pearl Award and the Global Shining Light Award go to journalists who have done in-depth reporting in extremely difficult or dangerous environments.

“GIJC invited the two Turkish colleagues because investigative reporting is under heavy pressure in many countries,” said Danish journalist, who is head of the secretariat for the global conference in Kyiv. “Because of that it’s more important than ever that the a global network of journalists both monitors and supports colleagues who run into trouble despite working according to international standards for good journalism.”

This global conference will be the 7th since 2001 that is organized by a global network of investigative journalists who work for nonprofit journalism groups throughout the world. The Danish project, Scoop, is preparing the conference in cooperation with Ukraine journalists.

More information about the conference is available at http://gijc2011.org/