Steven Gan launched Malaysiakini in 1999 after having spent time as a print journalist in an industry where most major Malaysian media is owned or controlled by the ruling coalition government.
According to The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)--the organization behind the awards--Gan was among five reporters arrested in 1996 for covering the Second Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor. It was journalism that he paid for with five days in jail--a sentence that caused Amnesty International to declare him a Prisoner of Conscience.
Avoiding a strict licensing regime that holds the threat of closure over Malaysian publications, Gan used the Internet to build a news Web site that boasts over 100,000 daily visitors.
In a report on Malaysiakini, an opposition leader lamented at the lack of recognition from the mainstream media of Gan's achievement. He said Gan's award was proof that the battle for press freedom in Malaysia, while still at a very initial stage, is still not lost.
DAP Chief Lim Kit Siang was quoted as saying that self-censorship of certain news by mainstream media "is a powerful reminder of the distance that must be traversed before Malaysians can enjoy the fresh air of freedom."
The tenth annual Press Freedom Awards will be presented at a special ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York on November 21.
The other winners are: Zeljko Kopanja, co-founder and editor of an independent Serb daily, Nezavisne Novine, in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Modeste Mutinga, publisher of the only independent daily newspaper in Congo, Le Potentiel; and the imprisoned Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, the reformist editor of several now-banned Iranian dailies.
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