Megha Rajagopalan, an Indian-origin journalist won the Pulitzer Prize amongst two other contributors, on exposing the Chinese detention camps for Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province.
She is an international correspondent for BuzzFeed News, a digital news publication and is based in London. The reports are yet another incident of exposing Islamophobia across the globe.
The Uyghurs are native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They gradually began to Islamize in the 10th century and most were recognized as Muslims in the 16th century. Since then, Islam has played an important role in Uyghur culture and identity.
Megha with her colleagues, Alison Killing and Christo Buschek won the Pultizer in the International Reporting category, as announced by the Pultizer board on Friday, 11th June 2021. “I’m in complete shock, I did not expect this,” Rajagopalan said according to BuzzFeed.
The Backdrop – Earlier in 2017, being fluent in Mandarin Chinese she visited an internment camp in China. These camps used to hold Uyghur Muslims in the restive Xinjiang province. This was at a time when the Chinese government had denied their existence. Megha belched out of the state shortly thereafter and her application to extend her visa was also denied. They claimed that any reporter, but Megha, is welcome to visit.
Even then, she continued to investigate and report on these camps from London itself. Rajagopalan and her colleagues worked along the lines of forensic analysis of the architecture and satellite images. This strengthened her interviews with former prisoners, of the detention camps where up to a million Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities have been interned.
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