A prominent Belarusian journalist known for articles challenging her country's authoritarian government has won a major freedom-of-speech prize.
British playwright Tom Stoppard announced Monday while collecting the 2013 PEN Pinter Prize at the British Library in London that he shared this year's prize with Iryna Khalip, a correspondent for Russia's "Novaya gazeta" newspaper in Belarus.
Khalip was detained and beaten in December 2010 after demonstrating against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and alleged electoral fraud.
She later received a suspended two-year sentence for disrupting public order.
Stoppard told RFE/RL on Tuesday that it is an honor for him to share the prize with "a brave journalist."
The PEN/Pinter prize, established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, is awarded jointly to a British writer and a "writer of courage" who has faced persecution.
British playwright Tom Stoppard announced Monday while collecting the 2013 PEN Pinter Prize at the British Library in London that he shared this year's prize with Iryna Khalip, a correspondent for Russia's "Novaya gazeta" newspaper in Belarus.
Khalip was detained and beaten in December 2010 after demonstrating against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and alleged electoral fraud.
She later received a suspended two-year sentence for disrupting public order.
Stoppard told RFE/RL on Tuesday that it is an honor for him to share the prize with "a brave journalist."
The PEN/Pinter prize, established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, is awarded jointly to a British writer and a "writer of courage" who has faced persecution.
