Daphne Caruana Galizia awarded 2018 Giuseppe Fava ‘Nothing but the Truth’ prize

Daphne Caruana Galizia was on Friday posthumously awarded the 2018 ‘Nothing but the Truth’ prize by the Giuseppe Fava Foundation.

She is the first non-Italian and also the first woman to receive the award.

The prize is presented annually on 5 January, the anniversary of Giuseppe Fava’s death. Past recipients of the award include Giovanni Tizian, Lirio Abbate, Maurizio Chierici, Roberto Morrione and Fabrizio Gatti.

The prize carries the following citation:

“In memory of Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose violent and cruel death at the hands of mafia-like figures was the last contribution of a life dedicated to seeking the truth with commitment, sacrifice, dignity and coherence. From a small nation, Daphne showed the world how every journalist capable of seeking out and telling the truth is indispensable to civil and democratic development and unbearable to corruption and dictatorship.”

The 34th annual commemoration of Giuseppe Fava began with a gathering of residents of Catania in Via Giuseppe Fava, where flowers were laid beneath the marble plaque marking the place where Fava was assassinated. The ceremony was followed by a theatre screening of the trailer of Prima che la notte, a film about Giuseppe Fava that will be broadcast on RAI TV, and a discussion with the director Daniele Vicari, and Michele Gambino and Claudio Fava who wrote the book that inspired the film.

At the end of the debate, the Giuseppe Fava Foundation presented the ‘Nothing but the Truth’ award in memory of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The Foundation was thanked with the words Daphne Caruana Galizia had published on her blog on 5 June 2017: “When people taunt you or criticise you for being ‘negative’ or for failing to go with their flow, or for not adopting an attitude of benign tolerance to their excesses, bear in mind always that they, and not you, are the ones who are wrong.”

Those words reflect Fava’s own life motto: “Is there any use in living if you don’t have the courage to fight?”

Giuseppe Fava, also known as ‘Pippo’, was an Italian writer, investigative journalist, playwright and anti-Mafia activist. In 1983, he and his team of independent journalists founded the progressive monthly magazine I Siciliani (The Sicilians), which denounced the connections between Mafia, politics and business in Catania.

On the night of 5 January 1984, while waiting in his car for his granddaughter to finish her theatre rehearsal, Giuseppe Fava was shot dead by the Mafia. His family had to fight for justice for years.

As his son, Claudio Fava, said on Friday: “First they killed him, then they tried to kill his memory with lies and calumny.”

Eventually Fava’s killers, those who commissioned the murder and their intermediaries were found, convicted and sentenced to prison.

The Giuseppe Fava Foundation now works to preserve his legacy. It was established in 2002 to commemorate Giuseppe Fava and to perpetuate his legacy. The Foundation maintains the archive of Fava’s work including newspaper arti- cles, investigations, books and theatre texts.

It also publishes his books, promotes anti-Mafia education in schools and promotes cultural activities for the young, encouraging them to tell the story of ‘their Sicily’.