Monitor Writer Wins Polk Award

BOSNIA STORIES

DAVID ROHDE, East European correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, has won the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism.

"For risking his life to uncover the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims, the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust," Mr. Rohde will receive the Polk Award in foreign reporting announced the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, which administers the Polk Awards.

Rohde and winners in other categories will be honored in New York on April 17.

In August 1995, Rohde first documented the existence of mass grave sites near the fallen Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. Rohde then found nine credible survivors who revealed for the first time the scope of the massacres and the role of Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic in overseeing them.

Rohde also traveled to The Netherlands and Croatia to investigate why the UN failed to protect Srebrenica.

In October, Rohde went back to Bosnian Serb territory. Before he was arrested by Bosnian Serbs, he found evidence at two additional grave sites. He spent 10 days in jail and was threatened with an espionage charge.

Other Polk winners include: John K. Cooley, ABC News and formerly of The Christian Science Monitor, career achievement award; Kurt Eichenwald, The New York Times, business reporting; Steve Stecklow, The Wall Street Journal, education reporting; Elizabeth Llorente, The Record, local reporting; Michael Weisskopf, David Maraniss, The Washington Post, national reporting; Chris Adams, The Times-Picayune, health care reporting; Tom Grant, KREM-TV, local TV reporting; Lea Thompson, Jack Cloherty, Sandra Surles, Dateline/NBC, consumer reporting; Jim Clancy, CNN, network TV reporting; The Orange County Register, medical reporting; Richard Behar, Fortune, magazine reporting; Frank Bruni, Nina Bernstein, Joyce Purnick, Lizette Alvarez, The New York Times, metropolitan reporting.