AFP picked up five prizes at the 13th Annual Human Rights Press Awards held Saturday in Hong Kong, three for text reporting and two for photography.
The awards, co-organised by Amnesty International, the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club and the Hong Kong Journalists Association, recognise news stories, features, photos, broadcast reports and online articles that highlight human rights -- or the lack of them -- across the Asia Pacific region during 2008, a year when there was the Olympic Games in Beijing, a major cyclone in Myanmar and a quake in China, unrest in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and a vast range of other issues, from AIDS to migrant workers to police brutality.
On the text side, Dan Martin and Marianne Barriaux of our Beijing bureau picked up merit awards in the general news category. Dan wrote several articles looking at China's security crackdown in Xinjiang province, and Marianne interviewed the wife of a leading Nobel-nominated dissident. Thibauld Malterre, of our Kabul bureau, was awarded the only prize, a merit, in the newspaper features category for an item about the treatment of the mentally handicapped in Afghanistan.
On the photo side, Pedro Ugarte (Delhi) won a plaque for a photo-reportage on AIDS out of India, while Bay Ismoyo (Jakarta) won a merit award for his coverage of a death in Indonesia.
Congratulations to all those who won, carrying on a tradition of strong AFP reporting on tough and often politically complex themes that might otherwise go unnoticed. AFP enters the awards every year and is invariably rewarded. And thanks to those across the region who were nominated but missed out this time.