Staff Reporter / NEW DELHI
Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) today deeply mourned the tragic and untimely death of Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui who was killed in the violence in Kandahar’s Spin Boldak District in Afghanistan.
There has been an outpouring of grief at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC) where Danish studied from 2005 -2007 and graduated with a Masters in Mass Communication.
JMI Vice Chancellor termed it’s a big loss to journalism and Jamia fraternity. She spoke to Danish’s father Prof. Akhtar Siddiqui as soon she got the news about the tragic incident. He informed her that Danish spoke to him two days back and talked about the assignment he was working upon in Afghanistan.
Prof. Akhtar Siddiqui who retired from JMI was Dean, Faculty of Education. He was Director of National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE) also.
In 2018 the MCRC had awarded Danish the Distinguished Alumni Award. Professor and Officiating Director Shohini Ghosh says: “This is one of the saddest days in the life of the MCRC. Danish was one of the brightest stars in our hall of fame and a proactive alumnus who kept returning to his alma mater to share with students his work and experiences. We will miss him deeply but are determined to keep his memory alive.”
Danish won a number of awards for his work inclosing a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his work as part of a seven-member Reuters team that documented the violence faced by Myanmar’s minority Rohingya community and their mass exodus to Bangladesh beginning August 2017. The photograph for which he was given the Pulitzer shows an refugee woman sinking to her knees on the shore of the Bay of Bengal, fatigued and forlorn. In the distance, a group of men unload the meagre belongings that they have carried with them in a small boat as they journeyed from their homes in Myanmar to Bangladesh for safety.
His last interaction with the students of MCRC was on April 26, 2021 when Sohail Akbar invited him to speak to the students of Convergent Journalism. “It was at the deadly peak of the COVID-19 second surge and Danish was very busy” remembers Sohail Akbar “but as always, he made time for the students of the MCRC”.
As a photojournalist, Danish has covered several important stories in Asia, Middle East and Europe. Some of his works include covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rohingya refugees crisis, Hong Kong protests, Nepal earthquakes, Mass Games in North Korea and living conditions of asylum seekers in Switzerland. He has also produced a photo series on Muslim converts in England. His work has been widely published in scores of magazines, newspapers, slideshows and galleries – including National Geographic Magazine, New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Forbes, Newsweek, NPR, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Bangkok Post, Sydney Morning Herald, The LA Times, Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Stern, Berliner Zeitung, The Independent, The Telegraph, Gulf News, Libèration and various other publications.