Lamees Dhaif, journalist from Bahrain, wins free speech award at Syracuse University

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Lamees Dhaif, a 34-year-old journalist from Bahrain, won the 2012 Tully Award for Free Speech tonight at Syracuse University.

Dhaif won the award for not backing down from violence and intimidation intended to silence her reporting. At a ceremony tonight in Syracuse, she described repeated government threats, the jailing of her family, and a hasty exile that forces her to "live out of my bags." She described watching her house burn down after pro-government forces firebombed it with Molotov cocktails. Government officials repeatedly told her to stop reporting, and she described how one member of the all-powerful royal family told her he would have her cut in half.

The award is presented annually to journalists like Lamees by the Tully Center for Free Speech in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. It is given to a journalist who has faced a significant free speech threat.

Dhaif has worked for several newspapers in Bahrain, a small country on the Persian Gulf, including Akhbar Al-Khaleej, Sadaa Al Isboua, Al-Qabas, Al-Afaaq and Al-Waqt.

She said she began her professional career in 2005. She first reported on radical Islamists and then began reporting on widespread government corruption. Both topics resulted in pressures to keep quiet but intimidation and violence started in earnest as she reported on the 2011 Arab Spring movement in Bahrain.

She was branded as an "lying witch" and quickly blacklisted from media throughout the Persian Gulf. Following the widespread government censorship, Dhaif turned to Twitter, Facebook and her blog http://lameesbahrainperceptions.blogspot.com.

Earlier, Dhaif endured several cultural and legal challenges to free speech. For instance, she was discouraged from pursuing journalism as a career unsuitable for a woman. She was told if she thought reporting was important work, she should have her brother or another male relative do it. According to a news release accompanying her award, in 2009, she was accused in a legal complaint of insulting the judiciary after she wrote a series uncovering allegations of bias against women in Bahrains family courts. Though the case was dropped, officials made it clear that they could revive the charges at any time.

In 2011, after the large-scale anti-government protests, Dhaif was again called into court for criticizing the regime, according to the release. These charges were also dropped, but the stakes were raised when the pro-government forces burned her home.

Despite these threats, she remained unbowed in her criticism of the government's attempts to suppress the protest movement. In addition to her large social media audience and reporting published on her blog, she also writes a weekly column for the Saudi newspaper Alyaum and presents a television program on the Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. During her speech at tonight's ceremony, Dhaif showed a film she made, graphically showing the deaths of protest members who had been shot by police.

During her talk in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium on campus, Dhaif touched on several topics. Among them:

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Lamees Dhaif, journalist from Bahrain, wins free speech award at Syracuse University