LONDON Nov 13 (APP)-A Pakistani journalist has won the 2009 Kurt Schork Award in international journalism but was unable to collect the prize in person as he could not obtain British visa.Karachi-based Maqbool Ahmed won the award for his incisive story on ‘Inside Swat’ for the Herald Publication which appeared in the monthly magazine’s November 2008 issue.The other two joint recipients of the same prize in the freelance journalist category were French woman writer Manon Querouil who wrote a piece about a Colombian teenager involved in gang wars, and Nir Rosen, an American journalist whose article on How we lost the war we won on Taliban appeared in the Rolling Stone magazine in October last year.

The ceremony to present the 8^th annual Kurt Schork Awards was held on Thursday evening at the Thomson Reuters Building in Canary Wharf, East London.

Kurt Schork was an US journalist who was killed in Sierra Leone in 2001 while covering the civil war on assignment for Reuters. The award is given to celebrate fearlessness and journalistic excellence.

The recipients were selected by international panel of judges comprising John F. Burns, The New York Times London Bureau Chief, Mark Danner, The New York Review of Books, Isabel Hilton of China Dialogue and Aung Zaw of Irrawaddy Magazine.

The jury described Ahmed’s on-the-ground piece from Swat as extremely well reported and fearless. It commented on Ahmed’s strong ability to go beyond the broad arc of the story and give a sense of what it is like to be there including senility to the people and their fears.  They hailed his long-term dedication to covering the Swat conflict.

In his short video link message on the occasion, Maqbool Ahmed said though he regretted his inability to collect the prize personally due to visa problems, nevertheless, the recognition of his work at the international level is the biggest honour for him and the publication.

The ceremony was followed  by a panel discussion on “Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond: Covering conflict in hostile States”. The participants included Martin Dickson, Financial Times Deputy Editor, Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 news, Bill MacLean, Reuters Security Correspondent.

They spoke of the perils of reporting from the conflict zone and of the various hurdles put up the authorities. They also noted that the established international publications were reluctant to post regular correspondents in such areas and preferred to depend on freelancers or local stringers.

Sir David Bell, Chairman, Financial Times, in his closing remarks pointed that some 700 journalists have lost their lives since 2000 while reporting from the conflict zones.

He described as scandalous the failure of the British authorities to grant visa to Maqbool Ahmed to attend the ceremony.

Sir David also admitted lack of interest in foreign reporting because of more pressing domestic issues and said at times many incidents of significant nature have gone unreported.