The Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya has posthumously been awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2007, the UNESCO said in Paris Friday, according to dpa. It is the first time the prize has been awarded posthumously. Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow on October 7, sharing the same fate as Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano, who died in 1987 and after whom the UNESCO prize was named. "Anna Politkovskaya showed incredible courage and persistence as she continued to discover events in Chechnya while the whole world was ignoring the conflict," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, president of the 14-strong jury. Politkovskaya's selflessness and risky search for truth was a yardstick for journalism, the jury said. Politkovskaya, who was born in 1958, had come to public attention through the publication of some 100 articles on the Chechnya conflict. Each year since 1997, the press freedom prize has been awarded to a person, an organization or an institution which defended or represented freedom of the press in remarkable ways despite the risks involved.
