The Globe and Mail’s Asia correspondent, Nathan VanderKlippe, has won the 2014 Amnesty International Canada award for his reporting on China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority.
The Globe and Mail's Asia correspondent, Nathan VanderKlippe, has won the 2014 Amnesty International Canada award for his reporting on China's treatment of its Uyghur minority.
The award honours outstanding reporting on human-rights issues in Canadian media.
"Nathan VanderKlippe's investigative piece on Beijing's attempt to stamp out dissent in a remote corner of China gives us new insight in the machinations of an authoritarian regime," said Jeff Sallot, one of the three judges. "This story shows great journalistic enterprise."
Mr. VanderKlippe reported from the remote Xinjiang region, where the largely Muslim Uyghur population faces severe restrictions on religious and cultural expression. The region has been the scene of terror attacks, which have brought a harsh and sweeping crackdown from Chinese authorities. "But the extent of the repression and violence being employed raises troubling questions about whether the real goal is to contain 'extremists' or simply to crush the Uyghurs, a minority that fits uncomfortably into Beijing's vision of a singular 'Chinese dream,'" Mr. VanderKlippe wrote.
Other winners of the Amnesty International Canada awards included Ric Esther Bienstock for a documentary on the global organ trade that was broadcast on the History Channel; a Global News television feature produced by Brennan Leffler and Nisha Pahuja about the Indian justice system and its treatment of the men arrested for the rape and murder of a woman on a bus in India; and a series of articles by Carol Sanders in The Winnepeg Free Press that examined the lives of Somali refugees in Kenya. The award in the online media category went to a multimedia report on African refugees and migrants in Italy produced by Asha Siad and Roda Siad.