Five journalists will receive the Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) International Press Freedom Awards in New York on November 24 for demonstrating courage and independence in their reporting despite threats to them and their families, CPJ announced.

The 1998 winners are GrИmah Boucar, a radio station owner and publisher in Niger; Gustavo Gorriti, a Peruvian investigative reporter working in Panama; Goenawan Mohamad, a magazine editor in Indonesia; Pavel Sheremet, a television bureau chief and newspaper editor in Belarus; and Ruth Simon, a wire service correspondent imprisoned in Eritrea.

The eighth annual awards will be presented at formal ceremonies at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City at a benefit dinner attended by leading national and international journalists. The event will mark the 17th year of CPJ, an independent, nonprofit organization that works to secure press freedom worldwide.

Award winner GrИmah Boucar, founder of Radio Anfani, Niger's only private radio station, and publisher of the мAnfaniо newspaper and magazine, мexemplifies the experiences of Africa's few truly independent radio broadcasters in his refusal to allow government intimidation and harassment to drive the station permanently off the air,о CPJ said. мIn a region where radio is the most effective medium for reaching the majority of citizens, Boucar has refused to flee into exile and has withstood attacks, harassment, and arrest. He remains committed to providing Niger's only source of critical coverage of the government and its policies.о

CPJ said Ruth Simon, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse, has been under arrest and held in detention without trial in Eritrea since 25 April 1997 "for doing her job as an independent journalist in reporting statements made by Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki that Eritrean troops were fighting alongside rebel forces in neighboring Sudan."