Niyaz Abdullah among five people recognized at ceremony in New York City Awards presented annually by Committee to Protect Journalists LONDON: Iraqi Kurdish journalist Niyaz Abdullah was among five recipients of an International Press Freedom Awards on Thursday night at a ceremony in New York City. The awards, which honor courageous journalists from around the world, are handed out annually by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based nonprofit organization. “Tonight we are celebrating the most courageous journalists from around the world and their fight for press freedom,” Gulnoza Said, the head of CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program, said. Abdullah is a freelance journalist who regularly contributes to media outlets in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, including Radio Nawa, broadcaster NRT, and the news websites Westga, Zhyan News Network, Hawlati and Skurd, among others. In her work, she covers politics, civil unrest, government corruption, human rights, and ethnic and religious minorities in Iraqi Kurdistan. “Honoring Abdullah with this year’s IPFA offers a powerful recognition of her essential contributions to the coverage of Iraqi Kurdistan and her unfailing commitment to the ideals of a free and democratic society in the face of grave personal risk,” a statement on the CPJ website said. Also honored on Thursday were Abraham Jimenez Enoa, Sevgil Musaieva, Pham Doan Trang and Galina Timchenko. Previous winners of the awards, which were founded in 1991, include Bahraini journalist and editor-in-chief of Al-Wasat Mansoor al-Jamri, Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam, and Russian TV presenter Tatyana Rostislavovna Mitkova, who in 1991 refused to read the official Soviet Union version of the military response to the uprising in Lithuania.