Indian based female journo who exposed China's mass detention camps wins Pulitzer
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New York: The Pulitzer Prizes 2021 in journalism and the arts were announced on Friday, among which Indian based journalist, Megha Rajagopalan have won the award for innovative investigative reports harnessing satellite technology that exposed China's mass detention camps for Muslim Uighurs and other minority ethnicities.
The award in the international reporting category that she shared with two colleagues from internet media, BuzzFeed News, was announced on Friday by the Pulitzer Board.
Megha and her colleagues used satellite imagery and 3D architectural simulations to buttress her interviews with two dozen former prisoners from the detention camps where as many as a million Muslims from Uighur and other minority ethnicities were interned.
"I'm in complete shock, I did not expect this," she said.
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.
Rajagopalan, who had previously reported from China but was barred from there for the story, travelled to neighbouring Kazhakstan to interview former detainees who had fled there, BuzzFeed said.
The publication also revealed how Megha had to endure harassment from the Chinese government throughout the reporting.
Ultimately, the four-story series painted a damning and detailed portrait of China's horrific detention and treatment of its Muslim citizens, who have major Western nations. labelled as genocide and as a crime against humanity.