Three Kashmiri photo journalists working with American news agency Associated Press (AP) have won 2020 Pulitzer Prize for striking feature photography exposing atrocities committed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after New Dehli abrogated the territory’s special status under Article 370.

The occupied region is since then pushed under sweeping curfew with internet and phone services shut down across the region.

Despite difficulties to report, the AP photographers Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand found ways to let outsiders see what was happening and now their work has been honoured with the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography.

The Pulitzer Prize – the most prestigious award in journalism – had earlier been postponed for two weeks due to the novel coronavirus. The prize winners were announced virtually on Monday due to the health crisis.

The photographers are honoured for their spectacular images captured during protests, military operations and daily life activities in the occupied valley especially when the region is denied access to internet and phone services under a brutal lockdown enforced by New Delhi since last year.

“Snaking around roadblocks, sometimes taking cover in strangers’ homes and hiding cameras in vegetable bags…then headed to an airport to persuade travellers to carry the photo files out with them and get them to the AP’s office in New Delhi,” the news agency described the impediment of reporting during these crucial times in a statement.

“It was always cat-and-mouse,” Yasin recalled, while adding: “These things made us more determined than ever to never be silenced.”

Yasin and Khan are based in Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city, while Anand is based in the neighbouring Jammu district.

Whereas Anand shared that the award left him speechless.

“I was shocked and could not believe it,” he said, calling the prize-winning photos a continuation of the work he’s been doing for 20 years with the agency.

The AP’s president and CEO Gary Pruitt said that this honour continues AP’s great tradition of award-winning photography.

“Thanks to the team inside Kashmir, the world was able to witness a dramatic escalation of the long struggle over the region’s independence. Their work was important and superb,” he noted.