Call for the release of the 2011 WAN-IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom laureate Dawit Isaak, and all journalists held in detention without trial in Eritrea.

On the 15 September 2011, the European Parliament passed a resolution on Eritrea and in particular the case of Dawit Isaak. WAN-IFRA fully backs the resolution and calls for the immediate release of Dawit Isaak and all imprisoned journalists in Eritrea.

Aspiring independent journalists in any war-ravaged, poverty-stricken country face a daunting task. If you add famine, military dictatorship, and the fact that the particular country in question is Eritrea, this task becomes nigh on impossible. In such a context the achievements of Dawit Isaak, co-founder of the country’s first independent newspaper and laureate of the 2011 WAN-IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom, are all the more remarkable.