Winners

Ansari Massoud works as Senior Reporter for Newsline, which is one of the leading newsmagazines of the country since 1998 as well as a Pakistan correspondent for London Sunday Telegraph, covering subjects such as corruption in the bureaucratic system and political, environmental and social subjects mainly pertaining to human rights. Ansari has been travelling in far flung areas of Kashmir, Sindh, NWFP, Punjab, Baluchistan or Afghanistan or the tribal areas near Pak-Afghan borders, bringing out stories such as: Al-Qaeda and the network of militant organizations; politics and political crimes; rise of religious fundamentalism; environment and poppy cultivation; ethnic and sectarian violence; human rights including slavery of peasants under feudals; ritual killings of women in the name of honour; religious and sexual minorities (homosexuals and transsexuals).

Syed Shoaib Hasan is employed with the British Broadcasting Corporation as news correspondent in Pakistan since October 2006. He was previously working with the Herald Magazine, part of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, Pakistan’s largest English language publication group. Hasan has covered diverse topics from lifestyles to natural calamities to civic issues.
The major body of his work is concentrated on conflict and regional politics, particularly the war on terror and its fallout.

This story is about a bid by residents of a village in Guangzhou province to recall their elected head for suspected corruption in mid-2005. Local authorities used a huge police force to suppress them. They hired thugs to beat villagers and jailed them. Activists, lawyers and reporters were also beaten. One activist is still under detention and one protest leader continues to get visits from Party executives who harass him. Villagers’ phones are tapped and surveillance cameras and thugs watch them to prevent them from doing anything against the government.