Chinese thwarted over golden pen award

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has rightly rejected a request by the China Newspaper Association to withdraw the 2007 golden pen of freedom it awarded to Shi Tao, a journalist now serving a 10-year sentence. The Chinese argue that Shi is a criminal who has been tried and sentenced according to the law of China. But WAN's ceo, Timothy Balding, said: "If the law does indeed make it possible to send a journalist to jail in such a case, the law should be abolished without delay, since it would be in contradiction with every conceivable international standard and convention on freedom of information and human rights". Shi was convicted of "leaking state secrets" for writing an e-mail about, of all things, China's media restrictions. (Via Editors' weblog)