Michel Hajji Georgiou, a senior political analyst for the French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour in Lebanon, has been awarded the World Association of Newspaper's 2007 Gebran Tueni Award honouring editors and publishers in the Arab region.

Georgiou, also a member of the newspaper's editorial board and chief of its yearly political supplement, received the award Sunday, during the opening ceremony of the second Arab Free Press Forum in Beirut. The prize honours Gebran Tueni, a Lebanese publisher and WAN board member who was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in December 2005.

The WAN awarded the prize to Georgiou for demonstrating values Tueni upheld, including freedom of the press, courage, leadership, ambition and high managerial and professional standards, according to a WAN press release.

Georgiou dedicated the award to his L'Orient-Le Jour colleagues and to journalists in jail and prisoners of conscience, including Michel Kilo, who is being held in a jail in Syria for signing a petition that condemns political assassinations to silence decent. The petition was published in the Tueni family newspaper, An-Nahar.

Thomas Brunegard, vice president of WAN and CEO of the Stampen Group in Sweden, presented the award.

“By extending the Gebran Tueni Award to Mr Hajii Georgiou, the World Association of Newspapers wishes to acknowledge his commitment to press freedom, and his determination to defend independent journalism in Lebanon,” Brunegard said, according to the release.

The award includes a 10,000 euro scholarship for Georgiou to participate in advanced newspaper training. In 2006, the prize was awarded to Nadia al-Saqqaf, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times.

Georgiou often writes about freedom of expression in L'Orient-Le Jour, and has stated that it is “the soul of a democratic system. It is Lebanon's added value in an Arab world often made of tyrannies and abandoned to intellectual desertification.”

Tueni worked with WAN for nearly 20 years as a leading member of the organisation's Press Freedom Committee, a board member for more than 10 years and a regular participant in missions to press freedom hot spots. He was also a constant advisor and support to the organisation on Arab and press freedom issues.

More from the Arab Free Press Forum can be found here.