Special Honor for Vanunu

At the annual Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards ceremony in London, March 22, Mordechai Vanunu was honored with a Special Award for Most Courageous Defense of Freedom of Expression.

His brother Meir accepted the award on behalf of the whistleblower who revealed the scale of Israel's secret nuclear weapon to the world in 1986, and has been imprisoned ever since.

Meir said, "This is an important award to a man whose actions are based on the issue of censorship. Censorship on the nuclear issue and censorship of what has happened to him for the last eighteen years. I informed Mordechai of the award and he was very pleased and wished he could receive the award himself. Sadly instead he is now back in solitary confinement."

Index on Censorship's editor-in-chief Ursula Owen observed that Mordechai Vanunu "has come to symbolize, in his long, often solitary, confinement, the intractable problem of state secrecy that continues to blight all efforts towards world nuclear disarmament."

Vanunu's award was presented to Meir by Peter Hounam, the journalist who broke the former nuclear technician's story.