The 28-year-old expected tonight in New York to collect the precious recognition obtained for the reports on Covid in the Subcontinent. No official explanation from the authorities: since 2018 he tells about the difficult life in his region
Today journalists from all over the world will participate in New York at the 2022 Pulitzer Prize Ceremony. Only one of the winners will be absent: Indian photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo.
Stuck Monday night at Delhi airport with regular visa and ticket in hand, you were not allowed to fly to the United States. And without a why: i officials gave no explanation.
for my work? for something else? They should tell me. The problem I do not know what the problem is, reacted the woman who shares the coveted recognition with three other Reuters colleagues for the reports made together on Covid-19 in India. N
We have not been offered an official explanation as to why she was not allowed to leave the country, but we believe reporters should be able to travel freely, Reuters attacked. It was Sanna herself, 28, who was the first to give the news on Twitter last Tuesday, disheartened. My heart is broken, she reacted, describing the Pulitzer as every reporter’s dream.
The photojournalist also climbed a pony 3,400 meters high to reach a village and immortalize a shepherd receiving the dose in one of the country’s most remote vaccination centers. Images that balance intimacy and devastation giving viewers a greater sense of place, the jury explained last May in announcing the winners.
A bitterness that is repeated for Sanna: in July she was stopped at the same airport in Delhi, in the same way, while she was on her way to Paris for the launch of a book and the inauguration of a photographic exhibition.
There is more than one hypothesis on the reasons for these stops: originally from Jammu and Kashmir, since 2018 Sanna has been working as a freelance photojournalist to tell the (difficult) life in this Muslim-majority region controlled by India and claimed by Pakistan.
His name is in fact added to that of many journalists and activists from this region who have not been able to leave the country, often stopped too with visas and suitcases in hand. Since New Delhi revoked Kashmir’s autonomy three years ago, the Indian government has imposed measures to stifle dissent. For the authorities these are initiatives to counter Islamic terrorism and the armed struggle, but human rights groups and the independent press say it is a repressive and discriminatory policy.
Moreover, the situation of freedom of the press and of opinion in the largest democracy in the world continues to worsen according to what was also noted by Reporters sans frontires: in the World Press Freedom Index, India dropped to 150th out of 180 this yearfrom the 142nd of the previous year.
October 20, 2022 (change October 20, 2022 | 17:49)
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