12th ANNUAL HUMAN RIGHTS PRESS AWARDS
ANNOUNCE GUEST SPEAKER:
JOHN KAMM
“Naming the Victims: The Role of Chinese Journalists
In the Aftermath of June 4”
The 12th Annual Human Rights Press Awards are pleased to announce that this year’s Awards Ceremony Guest Speaker is businessman and human rights strategist John Kamm. The event is 29 March at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong.
Mr Kamm is founder and executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco. In 2004, he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, which cited him for designing and implementing “an original approach to freeing prisoners of conscience in China by leveraging business relationships.”
He will speak on: Naming the Victims: The Role of Chinese Journalists in the Aftermath of June 4. Mr Kamm will address the role played by Chinese journalists in letting the world know the names of hundreds of people detained in the 1989 “counterrevolutionary riots” that occurred in Beijing and at least 300 mainland cities. Basing his narrative on nearly 10 years of research into Chinese provincial newspapers and other publications, he will reveal what we know about this population of detainees and speak the names of those still in prison. The relevance of the story of the “June 4 journalists” to today’s journalists covering China will be explored.
Mr Kamm came to Hong Kong as an anthropologist and schoolteacher in 1972, beginning three decades of living in and observing China. In 1990, he was president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, which was leading the fight to preserve China’s trading status in the US. During a banquet in his honor hosted by the senior Chinese official in Hong Kong at that time, Mr Kamm intervened on behalf of a mainland political prisoner. He has continued doing so ever since.
With his wife and friends, he founded the Dui Hua (Dialog) Foundation in 1999. The organization has recently opened an office in Hong Kong.
The Human Rights Press Awards are co-organized by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Journalists Association and Amnesty International Hong Kong.
Details of the ceremony
Date: Saturday, 29 March 2008
Time: Cameras in place by 11:45 am. Lunch begins at 12:30 pm.
Post ceremony press conference at 2:30pm
Venue: Foreign Correspondents’ Cub Hong Kong, North Block, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central
Tel: 2521-1511