One of last year's recipients was journalist Amy Goodman, whose infamous interview with Vanunu in 2004 was used as major testimony against him in his ongoing freedom of speech trial that began in January 2006.
Not until after the July 2007 sentence of six more months in jail, did Amy Goodman phone Vanunu for a follow up interview, but he wouldn't talk to her. When I saw Vanunu in Jerusalem a few weeks later, he told me he refused to speak to Amy because "the media has never helped me."
Amy Goodman was awarded the Alternative Nobel for "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."
In reply, Goodman affirmed, "I strongly believe that media can be a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is." [4]
The silence of the media regarding Vanunu’s trial and conviction for speaking to them and the silence regarding the undemocratic restrictions that forbid him the RIGHT to speak to foreigners and the RIGHT to leave the state should end by April 21, 2009. That is when the 5th year of restrictions that deny Vanunu his inalienable human right of speech and movement expire. Silence in response to wrong is complicity with it.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. -Article 19 UN Universal Declaration Human Rights
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.-13:2
The bottom line for Vanunu-and Gaza Palestine remains: FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM…NOW!
Contact President Obama:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
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