After a long gap, an Indian-origin journalist Megha Rajagopalan has bagged the US top journalism award Pulitzer Prize for her investigative reporting in China's mass detention camps. It was announced by the Pulitzer Board on Friday.
Megha Rajagopalan, along with two contributors won the Pulitzer Prize for innovative investigative reports harnessing satellite technology that exposed China's mass detention camps for Uighur Muslims and other minority ethnicities.
Barred from China, Rajagopalan from BuzzFeed News travelled to its neighbouring country Kazakhstan, where many Chinese Muslims have sought refuge. Rajagopalan's Xinjiang series won the Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting category.
According to the publication, she and her colleagues, Alison Killing and Christo Buschek identified 260 detention camps after building a voluminous database of about 50,000 possible sites comparing censored Chinese images with uncensored mapping software.
The three of them analysed thousands of satellite images of the Xinjiang region to try and figure out where one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities being detained.
"I'm so grateful they stood up and were willing to talk to us. It takes so much unbelievable courage to do that," Rajagopalan said.
Pulitzer prizes are awarded every year in twenty-one categories. Each winner receives a certificate and a USD 15,000 cash award. The winner in the public service category is awarded a gold medal.