North Eastern Journalist Nava Thakuria Honoured with International Award PEC 2021

GUWAHATI: Senior journalist Nava Thakuria from the northeastern state of Assam has been rewarded with the prestigious Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) for his dedicated efforts to safeguard the media rights in South Asian countries and also for defending press freedom in the area.

Nava Thakuria, a resident of Guwahati, Assam has been awarded remotely on Monday 30 November 2021 because of being unable to reach Geneva as per COVID restrictions in traveling to other countries.

Blaise Lempen, Secretary-General of PEC stated that the prestigious is delivered for the first time to the 2nd most populous country of the world i.e. India which has vibrant press and strong democracy. He added that journalists are targeted while writing or recording corruption, abuses and criminal activities and in 2020 a total of 15 journalists were brutally killed in India and in 2021 six journalists were killed.

The PEC Award 2021 pays tribute to around 300 journalists in India who lost their lives due to Covid complications faced on duty. In the year 2021, the global pandemic COVID-19 affected mostly the media fraternity of countries Brazil and India. The PEC award was earlier given to Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui in the year 2020.

Thakuria on talking about his achievement he appreciates this award which draws attention towards the journalists of India and says that receiving such an award is a great honor and this gives him more motivation to continue with his work being more responsible for his colleagues working in media.

He brought to light the situation of journalists in India as it remains a hazardous job here with undue salary along with threats from goons as well as the government. Apart from India, Thakuria has also recorded the media crisis in Myanmar and reported the imprisonment of 120 reporters after the violent military takeover in February among which 40 are still in jail.

Thakuria has done his graduation from Assam Engineering College under Guwahati University but choose to be a journalist by profession. He writes for different newspapers in India and is also involved in several media outlets based in various parts of the world.

Thakuria started his journalist career joining as a reporter in Natun Dainik, an Assamese language paper in 1990. In the year 1999, he shifted from a reporter to freelance journalism focusing on the fields of cultural, environmental and social-political development that occur in eastern India including Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar.

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