Journalist Ismat Ara Wins Human Rights and Religious Freedom Young Journalist Award 2022

On June 19, the winners of the Human Rights and Religious Freedom Awards were announced. Journalist Ismat Ara of The Wire along with Aishwarya Iyer from Scroll won the Journalist of the Year honours. The awards are announced by the Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group based in Washington, United States.

Prominent journalists Amy Goodman and Dr Yvonne Ridley were present during the event and lauded the courage of the journalists and their reports on the "targeting of religious minorities under the anti-conversion laws, persecution of Muslims during COVID-19, and human rights violations in Kashmir".

Newslaundry's Akanksha Kumar won for Best Text Reporting, while journalists Priyanka Thirumurthy and Shahid Tantray from The News Minute and The Caravan for their video stories. "The New Issue Magazine UK’s Syed Shahriyar received the honour for Best Photo Story on Human Rights and Religious Freedom," the organisation's statement added.

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Ismat Ara Wins HRRF Journalist of The Year

The winning stories by Ismat focus on the widening communal divide in India and the lynching of Muslims for their religious identity and in the name of love jihad. The line-up of stories also includes one on a Muslim man who was killed for violating COVID-19 curfew rules and one about how communal harmony still bloomed in Delhi's Jamia Nagar despite the polarised environment elsewhere.

Who Is Ismat Ara?

Ismat, the New Delhi-based journalist, reports on issues of communalism, politics, gender, and education, mostly from rural India. Her work has appeared in major Indian publications like The Hindu, News18, Firstpost, Newslaundry, The Quint and BBC. Ara who works with The Wire, one of the leading digital news media houses, has also written for international publications like TIME magazine and Huffington Post.

The scribe who is an alumna of Jamia Millia Islamia, where she got her Master's degree in Mass Communication, has also written articles for Feminism in India and Oxfam India, two organisations that work on issues of gender. Reportedly, she's also reported from Kashmir in 2019 for a local daily named Kashmir Observer.

The journalist has widely written about the Anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, Delhi Riots, Love Jihad, COVID-19, farmers' protests against Farm Bills and much more. She was presented Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity under the Investigative story category for her coverage of the 2020 Hathras gang rape case of a Dalit girl.