Achievers
AP’s Kashmir photographers win Pulitzer for coverage of clampdown post erosion of region’s autonomy
News agency’s Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand honoured with this year’s Pulitzer Prize in feature photography
Srinagar: Associated Press news agency’s photographers, Dar Yasin, Channi Anand and Mukhtar Khan have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize-2020 for covering the unprecedented crackdown and communication blackout by the government of India in the region after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.
The trio has won the prize in feature photography category.
Yasin and Khan are based in Srinagar, and Anand is based in Jammu district. The winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prize were announced on Monday.
The AP’s president and CEO Gary Pruitt told news website ‘Aljazeera’ that the trio’s work was “important and superb”.
“Thanks to the team inside Kashmir, the world was able to witness a dramatic escalation of the long struggle over the region’s independence,” Pruitt said.
Over the predicament of working under the last year’s unprecedented restrictions and communication blockade, Yasin told the news site in an e-mail, “It was always cat-and-mouse,” Yasin recalled on Monday in an email. “These things made us more determined than ever to never be silenced.”
Anand said the award left him speechless. “I was shocked and could not believe it,” he said.
“This honor continues AP’s great tradition of award-winning photography,” Pruitt said.
A statement by the sponsors on their website said the Kashmiri photographers were selected for their “striking images of life” in the disputed Himalayan territory.
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