Megha Rajagopalan, an Indian-origin journalist, and two contributors have won the Pulitzer Prize in the international reporting category for innovative investigative reports using satellite technology to expose China’s secret prisons and mass internment camps for detaining thousands of Uighur Muslims in its Xinjiang region.
Rajagopalan works for BuzzFeed News alongside two other coworkers. The Pulitzer Board revealed its awards on Friday, June 11th.
Neil Bedi of the Tampa Bay Times, another Indian-origin journalist, earned the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Bedi revealed a law enforcement project that employed computer modelling to identify persons who were suspected of becoming potential criminals. A total of 1,000 persons, including children, were observed as part of the initiative.
A board at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York presented the Pulitzer Awards for the 105th time.
The Pulitzer Prizes are given out every year in 21 categories. Each winner receives a certificate and a $15,000 cash prize in 20 of the categories.
Rajagopalan was the first to visit an internment camp in 2017, according to BuzzFeed News, at a time when China denied that internment camps existed despite allegations of thousands of Muslims being jailed in Xinjiang.
Rajagopalan’s visa was cancelled as a result, and she was removed from the country, according to BuzzFeed News’ bid for the prize.
According to IANS, Rajagopalan collaborated with two London-based contributors: Alison Killing, a licenced architect who specialises in forensic architecture and satellite photos of structures, and Christo Buschek, a programmer who creates tools for data journalists.
More than 260 buildings that seemed to be reinforced prison camps were discovered. Some of the locations could house more than 10,000 people, and several of them included industries where inmates were allegedly compelled to work.
Rajagopalan was also forbidden from entering China, so she travelled to Kazakhstan, where many Chinese Muslims have found asylum.
The scorching Xinjiang articles, according to Mark Schoofs, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, shed much-needed light on one of the biggest human rights atrocities of our time. “I’m in utter astonishment, I didn’t anticipate this,” Rajagopalan said when he contacted her to congratulate her, according to PTI.
She also expressed her gratitude to her partners, Killing and Buschek, her editor Alex Campbell, BuzzFeed News’ public relations team, and the organisations that financed their work, including the Pulitzer Center.
She has covered issues ranging from the North Korean nuclear issue to the Afghan peace process from 23 Asian and Middle Eastern nations.
Her study on the ties between Facebook and religious violence in Sri Lanka earned her a Mirror Award in 2019. She was formerly a Fulbright scholar in Beijing and a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.
