Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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Gao Yu
Freelancer, Winner of WAN's Golden Pen of Freedom,
1st UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize laureate
She is well-known as a columnist both in the Chinese-language press of Hong Kong and in
the United States. In 1988, she became assistant editor of a weekly economic review and
was arrested and jailed for 15 months for her coverage of the 1989 Beijing democracy
movement. On Oct. 2, 1993, two days before a planned visit to Columbia University, she
was rearrested and given a six-year sentence for “revealing state secrets.” The World
Association of Newspapers awarded her its Golden Pen of Freedom in 1995, and in 1997,
she was the first winner of UNESCO's annual World Press Freedom Prize.
Agnès Gaudu
China editor, Courrier International magazine
She has a MPhil in Chinese studies and spent two years on an exchange scholarship in
China (1979-1981). She worked at Agence France Presse and Reuters before freelancing,
reporting from China throughout the 1980s. In September 1989, she published a book
(Ramsay) on the social effects of China’s “open door” economic policy. In 1997, she
became China editor of the Paris weekly Courrier International, where she is in charge of
selecting and editing materials from the Chinese press to illuminate current issues. In
2005, she conceived and directed a 116-page special issue, La Chine des Chinois: De
Tian'anmen aux JO de Pékin (The China of the Chinese: From Tiananmen to the Beijing
Olympics), devoted to change in China over 10 years.
Merle Goldman
Professor of History Emerita, Boston University
She has a PhD in History and Far Eastern Languages, Harvard University (1964). She is a
Research Associate at the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard.
She has been an Adjunct Professor at the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute
since 1998. She has published numerous books, including From Comrade to Citizen: The
Struggle for Political Rights in China, Harvard Press 2005, paperback 2007; Sowing the
Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era, Harvard Press,
1994; China's Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent, Harvard Press 1981, paperback 1987;
Literary Dissent in Communist China, Harvard Press 1967, Atheneum paperback 1970; and
China: A New History, Enlarged Edition, co-authored with John K. Fairbank, Belknap Press
1998, updated 2006. She has been editor or co-editor of eight other books on China and
written more than 70 articles in scholarly journals and in The New York Review of Books,
New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic and elsewhere.
Guo Guoting (Thomas),
Maritime and human rights lawyer
He has 21 years of experience as a maritime lawyer and four years as a human rights
lawyer. He has also taught law and has published 10 books on law and 500 essays and
case studies. He is currently studying for an LLM degree at the University of Victoria,
British Columbia. He earned an LLB in international law in 1984 from Jilin University,
Changchun, China. From 2002-2005, he was managing partner of the Shanghai Tian-yee
Law Group, focusing on human rights cases involving dissidents and Falun Gong members.
He has written extensively on maritime law.