Entries for July 1996

As the editorial page editor for The Washington Post, Meg Greenfield was one of the most powerful women in newspaper journalism in the United States. She was responsible for the tone, direction and policy of one of the nation's most politically influential publications. Greenfield was able to strengthen or discourage careers, both in journalism and politics, and to shape national policy.  

A widow and mother of four, Lucy Sichone wrote for The Post, Zambia's leading daily newspaper. In February 1996, Sichone went into hiding, along with her 3-month-old baby, to avoid imprisonment for writing articles critical of the Zambian parliament. She was charged with contempt of Parliament, which would have dealt her a sentence of indefinite detention. The government issued a reward for information on her whereabouts, but Sichone remained in hiding, continuing to write articles demanding a return to press freedom for Zambia and her right to a fair trial.

Saida Ramadan, a Sudanese journalist, began writing in exile from Egypt after the Muslim fundamentalist-backed regime of Lt. General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in Sudan in 1989 and began a systematic campaign against the media. At the time, Ramadan was a correspondent for the Sudanese paper Al-Alam in Cairo. The paper was shut down, her passport revoked and she was not allowed back in her homeland.

For more than a decade Ayse Önal has reported on Turkish politics, organized crime and conflicts in the Middle East. She was arrested and detained in Iraq while reporting on the Gulf War, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists and put on the revolutionary left's death list. In 1994 Önal was shot and wounded by the Turkish mob because of her stories linking the government and organized crime; she subsequently went into hiding for three months.