AP wins 2 Overseas Press Club awards

By theamericannews
2 hours Ago

OPC announced the awards on Thursday.

AP staffers earned the Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper, news service or digital reporting from abroad for their comprehensive reporting on the barring and redirection of migrants across the globe. AP has won the Hal Boyle prize four of the last five years.

Often putting themselves at great personal risk, AP journalists from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the U.S. documented the systematic rape and torture of asylum seekers passing through Yemen, exposed how money sent from the European Union into Libya to slow the tide of migrants crossing the Mediterranean instead spawned a thriving web of businesses capitalizing on their misery, and chronicled life in limbo for tens of thousands of migrants hoping to gain asylum in the U.S. The work was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Ethiopian migrants disembark from a boat onto the shores of Ras al-Ara, Lahj, Yemen, July 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

The journalism sparked widespread action and outrage from the international community: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees vowed to change how it contracts for a U.N.-operated migrant shelter, while Stanford and San Diego universities used AP reporting to recruit volunteer medical personnel to send to clinics across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The judges said: “We met characters in Yemen, Libya and Mexico that we will not soon forget. The team of reporters impressed us with their access and effort focused on haunting personal details while never losing sight of the big picture.”

AP photographer Dieu-Nalio Chery won the prestigious Robert Capa Award for best photography requiring exceptional courage, for documenting violent demonstrations in Haiti over fuel shortages, rising inflation and allegations of government corruption.

Demonstrators run away from police shooting in their direction as a car burns during a protest demanding the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Feb. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Dieu-Nalio Chery)

His gripping images include barricades engulfed in flames, overturned cars in the streets of Port-au-Prince and a group of protesters dragging the lifeless body of a fellow demonstrator toward police.

Chery was wounded on assignment last September when a senator fired a pistol during a confrontation with opposition protesters outside of Haiti’s Senate.

The judges said: “His images were raw, precise and engrossing, leaving viewers with a strong emotional sense of what it was like to be on the ground. Chery’s brave work highlights the unique dangers some local journalists face and overcome to cover the stories important to their communities and to the world.”

AP also earned two OPC citations.

Cairo-based photographer Nariman El-Mofty earned a Robert Capa Award citation for photographs illustrating the challenges facing Ethiopian migrants passing through Yemen as part of a 900-mile journey from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia.

Buenos Aires-based photographer Natacha Pisarenko earned an Olivier Rebbot Award citation for best photographic news reporting from abroad in any medium for her images documenting political unrest in Bolivia.

A full list of winners is available here.

See a selection of the winning photos in the slideshow below:

A moto-taxi driver takes two women past a burning barricade set up by people protesting fuel shortages in Petion-ville, Haiti, Sept. 15, 2019.Demonstrators drag the body of a fellow protester toward police after police shot into the crowd during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise near the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Feb. 12, 2019.Opposition Senator Ralph Fethiere fires his gun outside Parliament as he arrives for a ceremony to ratify Fritz William Michel’s nomination as prime minister in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sept. 23, 2019A protester yells anti-government slogans in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 9, 2019.A demonstrator sits on the coffin containing the body of a protester who was killed during previous protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 4, 2019.Ethiopian migrant Eman Idrees shows her shoulder with a wound from torture after being held and abused for eight months in a desert compound IN Ras al-Ara, Lahj, Yemen, July 21, 2019.A supporter of Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales yells at a police officer, telling him to respect the nation’s indigenous people in La Paz, Bolivia, Nov. 12, 2019.Ethiopian migrants sit in the back of a pickup truck to be taken to desert compounds known in Arabic as “hosh,” in Ras al-Ara, Lahj, Yemen, July 24, 2019.A woman cries in front of soldiers guarding a street during a march of supporters of former President Evo Morales in downtown La Paz, Bolivia, Nov. 15, 2019.