Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication in Canada has announced a special new award in honor of Al Jazeera’s slain journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh.
“The Shireen Abu Akleh Emerging Reporter Award in Social Justice Journalism” will be launched at an event at the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre in downtown Ottawa on Friday evening, September 22.
Abu Akleh’s friends, family, and colleagues will pay tributes at an event featuring a concert by Oud player Abdul-Wahab Kayyali and cellist Sheila Hannigan.
“The family believes it is very important to enshrine her legacy going forward. Such scholarships will maintain her legacy, will maintain her name and I’m sure people will be interested to know about her achievements, her journalism, her death – all these issues,” Shireen’s brother Tony Abu Akleh said in a statement.
“We would like to thank Carleton University because awards like these, which honor Shireen and her contributions to journalism and her commitment to giving voice to those who live under brutal military occupation, are a way to keep her memory alive and let young journalists continue her legacy,” Abu Akleh adds.
“And that legacy was speaking truth to power and shining a light on both the pain of injustice and the perseverance of those who live under it.”
It is noteworthy that 51-year-old Shireen Abu Akleh was one of the first field correspondents for the Al-Jazeera channel, and for a quarter of a century, she was in the heart of danger to cover the wars of the Israeli occupation and its attacks and assaults on the Palestinian people.
Shireen was assassinated on May 11 by an Israeli sniper at the entrance to Jenin, as she was on her way with other journalists to cover the occupation’s storming of the camp. Her assassination sparked Arab outrage and widespread international condemnation.
