Danish Siddiqui was a photojournalist for an international news portal. He was from New Delhi…reports Asian Lite News
Actor Amit Sadh is all set to enchant the audience with his compelling performance in the short film ‘Ghuspaith’ which was recently screened at the Boston International Film Festival 2023.
He said that the film is dedicated to photojournalists like Danish Siddiqui, who “risked their lives to report realities to us through their heart-wrenching photographs.”
Amit said: “I’m thrilled to be a part of this project. When Mihir approached me for the film, his preparation and exuberance won me over. That’s why I said yes to Ghuspait. As his first directorial venture, he has done an excellent job.”
“I’m confident that he will go far from here, and it’s an honour to have been a part of encouraging such talent. They say pictures speak a thousand words. We’ve dedicated the film to photojournalists like Danish Siddiqui, who risked their lives to report realities to us through their heart-wrenching photographs.”
Danish Siddiqui was a photojournalist for an international news portal. He was from New Delhi. It was in 2021, when he was killed while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban Forces near a border crossing with Pakistan.
On the work front, Amit has projects lined up such as ‘Main’, ‘Pune Highway’, ‘Duranga 2’ and a few more in the pipeline, of which some are said to release this year.
Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer along with Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, and Amit Dave for their images of Covid’s toll on India….reports Asian Lite News
Pulitzer Prize 2022 winners in Journalism, Books, Drama and Music were announced at 3 pm (Eastern Time) on Monday.
The winner’s list included The Washington Post, including Indians Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave, and the late Danish Siddiqui of Reuters in Journalism.
Journalists from Ukraine were recognized with a 2022 Pulitzer Prize special citation, while jurors of journalism’s top honours also recognized coverage of the January 6th attacks on the Capitol, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Surfside condominium collapse in Florida.
Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer along with Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, and Amit Dave for their images of Covid’s toll on India. Siddiqui was killed last year while covering a clash between Afghan special forces and Taliban insurgents.
Full list of winners in journalism and descriptions of their awards are as follows:
Public Service
Winner: The Washington Post for its account of the assault on Washington on January 6th 2021.
Breaking News Reporting
Winner: The staff of the Miami Herald for its coverage of the collapse of the Seaside apartment towers in Florida.
Investigative Reporting
Winner: Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington and Eli Murray of the Tampa Bay Times for an expose of highly toxic hazards inside Florida’s only battery recycling plant that forced the implementation of safety measures to adequately protect workers and nearby residents.
Explanatory Reporting
Winner: Staff of Quanta Magazine, notably Natalie Wolchover, for reporting on how the Webb Space Telescope works.
Local Reporting
Winner: Madison Hopkins of the Better Government Association and Cecilia Reyes of the Chicago Tribune for an examination of Chicago’s long history of failed building and fire safety code enforcement.
National Reporting
Winner: The staff of The New York Times for a project that quantified a disturbing pattern of fatal traffic stops by police.
International Reporting
Winner: The staff of The New York Times for reporting that exposed the vast civilian tolls of US-led airstrikes, challenging official accounts of American military engagements in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Feature Writing
Winner: Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic for a portrayal of a family’s reckoning of loss in the 20 years since 9/11.
Commentary
Winner: Melinda Henneberger of the Kansas City Star for persuasive columns demanding justice for alleged victims of a retired police detective accused of being a sexual predator.
Criticism
Winner: Salamishah Tillet, contributing critic at large for The New York Times, for writing about Black stories in art and popular culture.
Editorial Writing
Winner: Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco of the Houston Chronicle for a campaign that, with original reporting, revealed voter suppression tactics, rejected the myth of widespread voter fraud and argued for sensible voting reforms.
Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
Winner: Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, Josh Adams and Walt Hickey of Insider for a comic on an Uyghur internment camp.
Breaking News Photography
Winner: Marcus Yam of the Los Angeles Times for raw and urgent images of the US departure from Afghanistan.
Winner: Win McNamee, Drew Angerer, Spencer Platt, Samuel Corum and Jon Cherry of Getty Images for comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the attack on the US capitol.
Feature Photography
Winner: Adnan Abidi, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Amit Dave and the late Danish Siddiqui of Reuters for images of COVID’s toll in India.
Audio Reporting
Winner: Staffs of Futuro Media and PRX for “Suave” — an immersive profile of a man re-entering society after more than 30 years in prison.
While the list for Books, Drama and Music included:
Fiction
Winner: The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, by Joshua Cohen.
Drama
Winner: Fat Ham, by James Ijames
History
Winner: Covered with Night, by Nicole Eustace and Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer
Biography
Winner: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South, by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Poetry
Winner: frank: sonnets, by Diane Seuss
General Nonfiction
Winner: Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, by Andrea Elliott
Music
Winner: Voiceless Mass, by Raven Chacon
The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature and musical composition within the United States.
It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, and is administered by Columbia University. (ANI)
Siddiqui was alive when the Taliban captured him. The Taliban verified Siddiqui’s identity and then executed him, as well as those with him. The commander and the remainder of his team died as they tried to rescue him … writes Michael Rubin
On July 16, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, the chief photographer for Reuters in India, was killed in Afghanistan.His death made headline news around the world. “He was embedded with a convoy of Afghan forces that was ambushed by Taliban militants near a key border post with Pakistan,” the BBC reported. He “was killed while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and the Taliban,” the New York Times wrote.
He “was killed in what was described as Taliban crossfire,” the Washington Post explained. Reuters itself gave a bare-bones account and said, “We are urgently seeking more information [and] working with authorities in the region.” The State Department, meanwhile, said, “We are deeply saddened to hear that Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed while covering fighting in Afghanistan.”
Danish Siddiqui
The circumstances of Siddiqui’s death are now clear. He was not simply killed in a crossfire, nor was he simply collateral damage; rather, he was brutally murdered by the Taliban.
Local Afghan authorities say that Siddiqui traveled with an Afghan National Army team to the Spin Boldak region to cover fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban to control the lucrative border crossing with Pakistan. When they got to within one-third of a mile of the customs post, a Taliban attack split the team, with the commander and a few men separated from Siddiqui, who remained with three other Afghan troops.
During this assault, shrapnel hit Siddiqui, and so he and his team went to a local mosque where he received first aid. As word spread, however, that a journalist was in the mosque, the Taliban attacked. The local investigation suggests the Taliban attacked the mosque only because of Siddiqui’s presence there.
Siddiqui was alive when the Taliban captured him. The Taliban verified Siddiqui’s identity and then executed him, as well as those with him. The commander and the remainder of his team died as they tried to rescue him.
While a widely circulated public photograph shows Siddiqui’s face recognizable, I reviewed other photographs and a video of Siddiqui’s body provided to me by a source in the Indian government that show the Taliban beat Siddiqui around the head and then riddled his body with bullets.
Siddiqui, of course, was doing his job: documenting newsworthy events. It was a risky job, but he took normal precautions that, across countries and battlefields, generally suffice to protect journalists. As for the Afghan National Army: It gave Siddiqui permission to cover the fighting near Spin Boldak because Afghan forces believed they would win. Documenting a victory could provide a much-needed morale boost.
The Taliban’s decision to hunt down, execute Siddiqui, and then mutilate his corpse shows that they do not respect the rules of war or conventions that govern the behaviour of the global community. There are many parallels between the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban. Both infused radical ideology with racist animus. The Taliban are always brutal but likely took their cruelty to a new level because Siddiqui was Indian. They also want to signal that Western journalists are not welcome in any Afghanistan they control and that they expect Taliban propaganda to be accepted as truth. In effect, Siddiqui’s murder appears to show that the Taliban have concluded that their pre-9/11 mistake was not that they were cruel and autocratic but rather that they were not violent or totalitarian enough.
The real question for journalists is why the State Department continues to pretend that Siddiqui’s death was just a tragic accident.
The Biden administration’s decision to uphold the Feb. 29, 2020, U.S.-Taliban agreement even though the Taliban have not, and to withdraw completely, is condemning Afghanistan to a bloodbath. It threatens to destabilize the broader region. But rather than confront reality, the Biden administration appears intent to whitewash Taliban crimes. To acknowledge the fact that the Taliban executed Siddiqui and that the photographer’s death was not a tragic accident would contradict White House spin.
If only successive administrations focused more on defeating the Taliban rather than absolving them or projecting sincerity onto them, the situation might never have become so dire.
(The article was first appeared in Washington Examiner. Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.)
Journalists say that the widespread nature of oral and written threats has meant that no media workers feel safe, reports Asian Lite News
The death of Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, while caught in a crossfire between the Taliban and Afghan forces, puts the spotlight firmly on increasing dangers faced by mediapersons in the war-torn country.
An Indian and a Pulitzer award winner, Siddiqui was however not murdered, unlike the more thab 30 Afghan journalists who have been killed on the line of duty, mostly by Taliban radicals.
Some of them were woman who dared the Talibans with their bold reporting.
Three women who worked for the local Enikass Radio and TV were brutally murdered in April in Jalalabad.
The victims, Mursal Wahidi, 25, Sadia Sadat, 20, and Shahnaz Raofi, 20, worked in a department that records voice-overs for foreign programs.
Danish Siddiqui
A fourth woman was wounded in the attacks.
Malalai Maiwand, 26, a television and radio presenter with Enikass, had been gunned down in much the same way in December 2020.
The Taliban denied any involvement but have been blamed for much of the wave of assassinations that began after the February 2020 peace agreement negotiated between the insurgent group and the United States.
A senior Enikass management official told IANS that the Taliban hated their outlet not only because of their reporting but also because they employed many women.
Following the 2001 US invasion which unseated the Taliban and ended its extremist form of Islamic law that banned women from most jobs, Afghanistan’s media outlets and news stations have emboldened a new generation of Afghans and especially women, despite the unending war around them.
Afghan national army soldiers take part in an operation against Taliban militants in Kunduz city, Afghanistan. (Photo by Ajmal Kakar_Xinhua_IANS)
But since 2018, more than 30 media workers and journalists have been killed in Afghanistan, according to a recent UN report.
From September 2020 to January of this year, at least six journalists and media workers were killed in such attacks, according to the report.
Many died thereafter.
The recent attacks have amounted to an “intentional, premeditated, and deliberate targeting of human rights defenders, journalists and media workers”, the report said.
“With a clear objective of silencing specific individuals by killing them, while sending a chilling message to the broader community.”
Taliban forces have been deliberately targeting journalists and other media workers, including women, in Afghanistan, the US-based Human Rights Watch has said.
Threats and attacks against journalists across the country have increased sharply since talks began between the Afghan government and the Taliban, heightening concerns about preserving freedom of expression and the media in any peace settlement.
Human Rights Watch found that Taliban commanders and fighters have engaged in a pattern of threats, intimidation, and violence against members of the media in areas where the Taliban have significant influence, as well as in Kabul.
Those making the threats often have an intimate knowledge of a journalist’s work, family, and movements and use this information to either compel them to self-censor, leave their work altogether, or face violent consequences.
Provincial and district-level Taliban commanders and fighters also make oral and written threats against journalists beyond the areas they control.
Members of the Afghan security force take part in an operation in Jawzjan province, Afghanistan. (Xinhua_Mohammad Jan Aria_IANS)
Journalists say that the widespread nature of the threats has meant that no media workers feel safe.
“A wave of threats and killings has sent a chilling message to the Afghan media at a precarious moment as Afghans on all sides get set to negotiate free speech protections in a future Afghanistan,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director.
“By silencing critics through threats and violence, the Taliban have undermined hopes for preserving an open society in Afghanistan.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed 46 members of the Afghan media between November 2020 and March 2021, seeking information on the conditions under which they work, including threats of physical harm.
Those interviewed included 42 journalists in Badghis, Ghazni, Ghor, Helmand, Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Wardak, and Zabul provinces and four who had left Afghanistan due to threats.
In a number of cases that the Human Rights Watch documented, Taliban forces detained journalists for a few hours or overnight.
In several cases they or their colleagues were able to contact senior Taliban officials to intercede with provincial and district-level commanders to secure their release, indicating that local commanders are able to take decisions to target journalists on their own without approval from senior Taliban military or political officials.
Taliban officials at their political office in Doha, Qatar, have denied that their forces threaten the media and say that they require only that journalists respect Islamic values.
But Taliban commanders throughout Afghanistan have threatened journalists specifically for their reporting.
The commanders have considerable autonomy to carry out punishments, including targeted killings.
