Sri Lankan journo part of intl. team bagging top Asian award for human rights reporting
Friday, 20 June 2014 00:37
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Malaysian-based digital news magazine The Edge Review wins two SOPA awards
Sri Lankan journalist Marwaan Macan-Markar was a member of an international team of reporters who bagged a top Asian award for human rights reporting at the recent Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) annual awards in Hong Kong. The reporting team contributed to a series of stories about political Buddhism across Southeast Asia for The Edge Review, a Malaysian-based digital news magazine that focuses on Southeast Asian affairs.
“The Edge Review’s series on Buddhist militancy across Southeast Asia took readers beyond the immediate events in Myanmar to look at the broader role of Buddhist political movements in the region and their ties to extremist politics,” stated the judges in their comments for the Excellence in Human Rights Reporting award.
“This is a reflection of The Edge Review’s strong team of journalists – all familiar names behind stories that have shaped the region and who remain at the top of their game,” said Leslie Lopez, Editor and Managing Director of The Edge Review, who also won the Excellence in Business Reporting for an expose on Malaysia’s controversial State-owned investment fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd.
“To be shortlisted for four categories for Asia’s most prestigious awards for journalistic excellence and to win two is testimony to the depth and breadth of The Edge Review’s coverage of the region,” he added of the digital magazine that was launched in March 2013.
This year’s SOPA Awards received a record number of entries from across Asia, with around 676 nominated works competing for 18 categories among English and Chinese regional, local print or digital publications and wire services. The other 2014 winners included entries by the Wall Street Journal Asia, Reuters, The International New York Times and the South China Morning Post.
The panel of judges comprised more than 100 judges in various locations around the world, including journalists, editors, columnists from leading publications, as well as notable academics from media departments of prestigious universities.
Macan-Markar has been reporting from Southeast Asia for over 10 years. Before that, he was based as a correspondent in in Mexico City. His dispatches as a foreign correspondent have covered ethnic conflicts, political upheavals, war crimes, human rights violations, peace talks, natural disasters, climate change, education, development and poverty, among other issues. These assignments in 15 countries span Latin America, Africa and Asia.
He used to be the Features Editor of The Sunday Leader and a features writer at the Sunday Times. It was during that period, in the 1990s, that he began to pursue the human rights beat, filing dispatches from the frontlines of the ethnic conflict in the north and east, and also reporting from southern Sri Lanka recovering from the second JVP uprising.
