UNESCO has established an annual World Press Freedom Prize, the UNESCO/Guillermo CANO Prize, in honor of the Colombian journalist who was killed ten years ago in front of his newspaper building. This annual $25,000 prize is intended to honor a person, organization or institution that has made a notable contribution to the defence of, or promotion of, freedom of the press anywhere in the world.
| 1999 - Jesus Blancornelas, Mexico |
 Jesus Blancornelas of Mexico who survived a 1997 assassination attempt for his exposés on corruption and drug trafficking in Mexico was chosen to receive the 1999 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
Jesus Blancornelas will be awarded the $25,000 prize on 3 May in Bogota, Colombia, as part of the celebrations for World Press Freedom Day. Both activities are part of UNESCO's mission to promote the free flow of information and its activities in the interest of press freedom, media independence and pluralism.
Mr. Blancornelas is the co-founder and editor of the Tijuana-based Zeta news weekly as well as the vice-president of the Mexican Society of Journalists, which he helped to create in 1998 to fight for press freedom. Mr. Blancornelas has also been investigating the 1988 murder of Zeta co-founder Hector Felix Miranda.
The prize, chosen by a jury of 14 news professionals from around the world, honours each year a person, organization or institution that has made a notable contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially if it involves risk.
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| 1998 - Christina Anyanwu, Nigeria |
 The 1998 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was awarded by UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor to the Nigerian journalist Christina Anyanwu who is the publisher and editor in chief of "The Sunday Magazine" (Lagos, Nigeria).
According to the World Press Freedom Committee and Reporters Sans Frontieres which proposed her for the prize, she is being held in detention in a prison in the north-east of Nigeria in particularly difficult conditions.
She was arrested following the publication of an article about an attempted coup against the Nigerian government on March 1, 1995, and was condemned to life imprisonment by a special military tribunal in a trial held behind closed doors on July 4, 1995. Her sentence was commuted to 15 years on October 10, 1995. According to the same sources, her trial was marked by numerous irregularities. She was, notably, denied the right of appeal.Christina Anyanwu is one of four journalists held in detention since the attempted coup in her country where infringements of the rights of the journalists and freedom of the press are innumerable.
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| 1997 - Gao Yu, China |
 On 21 March 1997, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize was awarded by an independent international jury to the Chinese journalist Gao Yu.
"The jury was unanimous in choosing Gao Yu who has been fighting for years for press freedom in her country. She has paid, and is still paying, with her own freedom for her commitment to media independence which UNESCO supports," said Jury President and French journalist Claude Moisy, President of UNESCO's Advisory Group for Press Freedom.
According to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), which nominated the Chinese journalist, Gao Yu began her career in 1979 as a reporter for the China News Service. In 1988 she became deputy editor-in-chief of Economics Weekly, run by dissident intellectuals. She also worked as a freelance journalist for several newspapers in China and Hong Kong. In November 1988, she published an article in Hong Kong's Mirror Monthly which the Mayor of Beijing called the "political programme" of the "turmoil and rebellion." He labelled Gao Yu an "enemy of the people." She was detained in 1989 following the Tiananmen protests and released 14 months later because of health problems. She was arrested again on October 2, 1993 and sentenced in November 1994 to six year imprisonment for "leaking state secrets."
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