Norwegian PEN's Ossietzky Prize for "outstanding achievements
within the field of free expression" will be awarded to Palestinian
journalist Mohammed Omer during the commemoration of the Day of
the Imprisoned Writer. The prize will be awarded at an evening event
at the House of Literature in Oslo on 16. November. Norwegian PEN will
also award its first honorary prize to its former president, translator
Kjell Olaf Jensen. During this event, the newly arrived "writer of refuge" in the city of Oslo, Kenyan writer Philo Ikonya, will read from her own texts.
The program for the event also includes a short lecture by Mohammed Omer, speeches to the prize recipients by editor Alf van der Hagen (Omer) and Norwegian PEN president Anders Heger (Jensen),
as well as an account covering the five writers to be focused on during
this commemo-ration, by the chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of
Norwegian PEN, Trine Kleven.
Mohammed Omer (25)
is a Palestinian journalist who has written for the Norwegian weekly
"Morgenbladet" and worked for the "Norwegian People´s Aid" in Gaza. He
also writes for international media including the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs, Electronic Intifada, The Nation, and Inter Press
Service. In 2008, Omer was awarded the 2007 Martha Gellhorn Prize for
Journalism. In the award citation, Omer was honored as "the voice of
the voiceless" and his reports were described as a "humane record of
the injustice imposed on a community forgotten by much of the world."
While
traveling back from the prize ceremony in London to the Gaza Strip,
Omer reported that he was stripped to his underwear, humiliated and
beaten by Israeli soldiers. He was subsequently hospitalized upon his
return to Gaza, where it was discovered that Omer had sustained several
broken ribs and various bodily contusions as a result of the ordeal.
He is now undergoing medical treatment in the Netherlands.
Prior
to the price ceremony in Oslo, Omer was on a tour of the U.S.,
lecturing about his experiences and the situation in Gaza at such
high-ranking universities as Harvard and MIT.
Posted
at
14 Nov 2009 7:45 AM
by
