Winning a Pulitzer prize is no mean achievement. An even meaner feat is to figure out why you are not allowed to leave your country to receive the prestigious prize.
The country in question is India, not North Korea or China.
Barred twice from leaving India within a span of three months, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, the Pulitzer-winning Kashmiri photojournalist, said on Wednesday that she had no idea why she was not allowed to travel.
“I am actually trying to understand why this has happened to me. I am looking for the reasons. Since I think they have nothing against me, I tried to reach out to officials since I was last barred (in July), but I got no response,” Sanna, 27, told The Telegraph.
“I think the right to travel is the basic right of any individual, why deny me the same? I was like so much looking forward to receive it (Pulitzer). It is really very traumatic,” she added.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement for me. My family and I were so excited about it, but sadly I am not allowed to collect the award,” Sanna said.
The photojournalist, who was part of a Reuters team that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography, was on Tuesday barred by immigration authorities in Delhi from flying to New York to receive the award although she had a valid US visa and ticket. In July, she was barred from travelling to Paris for a book launch and photography exhibition as one of the 10 winners of the Serendipity Arles Grant 2020.
Sanna was awarded the Pulitzer for her role in coverage by the news agency Reuters of India’s devastation last year during the second wave of Covid-19.
On Wednesday, The New York Times, reporting how Sanna was prevented from leaving India, recalled: The second wave of Covid particularly affected India’s urban centres, with overwhelmed hospitals running out of oxygen and patients dying in parking lots. The Indian government has tried to play down the toll. It lashed out against coverage of the devastation by the foreign news media, particularly photographs of mass cremations that continued around the clock, calling them insensitive.”
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that promotes media freedom and defends the rights of journalists, has urged the Indian government to allow Sanna to travel abroad freely and collect her Pulitzer Prize in New York.
“There is no reason why Kashmiri journalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo, who had all the right travel documents and has won a Pulitzer — one of the most prestigious journalism awards — should have been prevented from travelling abroad,” said Beh Lih Yi, the CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in Frankfurt.
“This decision is arbitrary and excessive. Indian authorities must immediately cease all forms of harassment and intimidation against journalists covering the situation in Kashmir,” Beh added.
Kashmir journalists, too, have expressed solidarity with Sanna.
“For Kashmiri journalists, the world is altogether a different reality. We have been silenced and we have been made immobile. Despite global condemnations, nothing is changing for us,” Aakash Hassan, who was himself prevented from travelling to Sri Lanka in August, tweeted.
The Journalist Federation of Kashmir said several Valley journalists had been “hounded in the name of the so-called ‘travel restriction list’, the existence of which has never been confirmed nor denied officially”.
“Journalists in Kashmir have always worked under perilous conditions, holding up values of press freedom in the face of dangers to life and liberty. A vibrant media is vital for a democracy to flourish and for that press freedom is of utmost importance,” the federation said.
“We protest the harassment of Ms Mattoo and stand in solidarity with her. But these brazen intimidation tactics will not stop us from doing our work,” it added.
