A journalist of Indian origin, Megha Rajagopalan, along with two contributors, has been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for innovative for remarkable investigative reporting that revealed a large infrastructure of prisons and mass incarceration camps surreptitiously developed by China for the detention of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Xinjiang area.
Buzzfeed news journalist Megha Rajagopalan along with two Indian-origin journalists won the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honours awarded for notable contribution in the field of journalism.
Neil Bedi, Tampa Bay Times' investigative journalist took home the award for local reporting. Bedi and Kathleen McGrory were awarded the prize for their investigation that revealed a Sheriff's Office operation that used computer modelling to identify people who were suspected of being future offenders. Around 1,000 people, including children, were tracked by the programme.
"What Kathleen and Neil unearthed in Pasco County has had a profound impact on the community," said Mark Katches, Times executive editor. "This is what the best investigative journalism can do and why it is so essential."
Rajagopalan was the first person to visit a detention camp in 2017, not long after China began detaining hundreds of Muslims in Xinjiang, according to BuzzFeed News.
"In response, the government tried to silence her, revoking her visa and ejecting her from the country," BuzzFeed News entered a submission for the award.
"It would go on to cut off access to the entire region for most Westerners and stymie journalists. The release of basic facts about detainees slowed to a trickle."
Rajagopalan, who works from London partnered with two contributors: Alison Killing, a licenced architect who specialises in forensic architectural study and satellite pictures of buildings, and Christo Buschek, a programmer who makes tools for data journalists.
Rajagopalan told BuzzFeed News minutes after winning that she wasn't even following the event live since she wasn't expecting to win. She didn't know till the Schoofs called to congratulate her on her accomplishment.
"I am really taken aback; I did not anticipate this," Rajagopalan remarked over the phone from London.
She thanked the people who worked with her on this project, including her collaborators, Killing and Buschek, her editor Alex Campbell, BuzzFeed News' public relations team, and the organisations that funded their work, such as the Pulitzer Center.
Rajagopalan also applauded the sources who talked to them despite the fear of retribution for themselves and their families.
"I'm so grateful they stood up and were willing to talk to us," she said. "It takes so much unbelievable courage to do that."
They set out to examine hundreds of satellite images of the Xinjiang region, an area larger than Alaska, in order to answer a simple question: Where were Chinese officials detaining 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities?
The three spent months comparing banned Chinese photos to uncensored mapping software. They started with a massive dataset of 50,000 locations.
Buschek created his own technique to filter through the photographs. The team then had to "the team had to go through thousands of images one by one, verifying many of the sites against other available evidence," according to BuzzFeed News' award submission.
They eventually discovered around 260 buildings that seemed to be reinforced holding camps. Some of the locations could house more than 10,000 people, and several of them had industries where convicts were compelled to work.
The groundbreaking technological reporting was supported by a significant amount of traditional "shoe leather" journalism.
Rajagopalan, who was barred from entering China, instead travelled to Kazakhstan, where many Chinese Muslims have sought asylum.
There, Rajagopalan met more than two dozen people who had been detained in the Xinjiang camps, earning their trust and persuading them to share their harrowing stories with the rest of the world.
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