Although her sentence was reduced to 15 years after an international outcry, that is not good enough. Her health has deteriorated, and she is in danger of going blind. Held in solitary confinement under tight security control, she is permitted only one visitor a month, from a family member who first must obtain permission and clearance from security officials and prison authorities. Communication with her not possible.
More than 300 journalists, media executives, and human rights activists who attended CPJ’s awards dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria signed appeals to Gen. Abacha, urging that he release Anyanwu.
Obtaining Anyanwu’s freedom and the release of the other 16 journalists imprisoned in Nigeria remains at the forefront of CPJ’s advocacy efforts.
Bill Keller, managing editor of The New York Times and a former correspondent in Africa, said in presenting Anyanwu’s International Press Freedom Award:
"Chris Anyanwu is not a firebrand … Colleagues in Nigeria describe her as a level-headed professional, competitive, independent-minded and strong-willed. But not reckless. But that, of course, is beside the point. If Christine were an unreliable journalist or a partisan zealot, we would still be appalled by her imprisonment. What inspires us … is not really her voice, but her refusal to let it be silenced."
On February 16, 1998, Anyanwu was awarded the 1998 UNESCO/Guillermo
Cano World Press Freedom Prize. Upon awarding her the $25,000 prize, Claude
Moisy, president of UNESCO’s Advisory Group for Press Freedom, decried
her treatment and faulted Nigeria as "a country where the independent press
and freedom of information have almost disappeared."
At the end of the year, Nigeria held 17 reporters and editors in jail—the
greatest number of any country in the region. This alarming increase—more
than double last year’s total of eight—means that Nigeria is now the world’s
second-worst jailer of journalists, after Turkey. The Abacha government
refuses in most cases to permit visitors to these prisoners, who are said
to be confined under extremely primitive conditions and subjected to physical
abuse.