Three photojournalists working news agency Associated Press or AP have won the coveted Pulitzer Award for showing ‘India’s crackdown on Kashmir’ to the world. These journalists are Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand win Pulitzer.
According to Pulitzer, the three Indian journalists won the award for ‘striking images of life in the contested territory of Kashmir as India revoked its independence, executed through a communications blackout.’
Dar Yasin was born in 1973, in Jammu and Kashmir. He has a bachelor degree in computer science and technology. Dar has extensively covered the Kashmir conflict, South Asia Earthquake and its aftermath, and the historical opening of the bus route between divided Kashmir. On assignment in Afghanistan he has covered the Afghan War, Afghan Refugees and Daily life of war-torn Afghanis. Dar has also covered the Rohingya refugee crisis who fled large- scale violence and persecution in Myanmar. His works have appeared in all the major newspapers and news magazines around the globe.
Dar’s work has earned him dozens of international photo awards.
Mukhtar Khan was born and brought up in Jammu and Kashmir, where he has lived all his life. In his over two-decade-long career, he has extensively covered the region–following the Kashmir conflict on a daily basis, the 2005 earthquake that shook his region, stories between the nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan, along with other major stories that unfolds in his beat.
Through it all, Khan has focused on the daily life of war-torn Kashmir. He started working with the Associated Press in 2000 before joining the organisation full time in 2004. He won an Atlanta Photojournalism Award in 2015.
Channi Anand is based in Jammu, a strategic location not far from the India-Pakistan border that experiences frequent cross border violence. Seeing people flee their homes has become routine but it still affects him each time he covers stories of displacement. He has followed political developments between the neighbors relentlessly for the Associated Press since 2000.
After more than two decades in the field, Channi now finds himself at home working on social issues, natural calamities, live encounters between security forces and terrorists or extreme weather conditions that is harshest for the homeless. He has also traveled to work on a story on Siachin Glacier, the highest battleground in the world. He lives with his wife and two children.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi congratulated these photojournalists for winning Pulitzer. He wrote on Twitter, “Congratulations to Indian photojournalists Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand for winning a Pulitzer Prize for their powerful images of life in Jammu & Kashmir. You make us all proud.”
BJP’s Sambit Patra launched a tirade against Gandhi as he said that Pulitzer had declared Kashmir as a disputed territory in its citation. He tweeted, “Will Sonia Gandhi answer? Whether She and the Congress Party concur with Rahul Gandhi on the issue of Kashmir not being an integral part of India! Rahul today congratulated those who got an award for considering Kashmir as a “Contested Territory”!