Correspondent
Languages

Capturing the winning shots

Anthony Wallace Tuesday 12 May 2020

Anthony Wallace, AFP’s Hong Kong bureau photographer, recently won the prestigious “Human Rights Press Award” in the photography series category for his coverage on the pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The annual awards, now in their 24th year, recognise international, local and student reporters covering human rights issues across Asia.

The winners for 2020 were dominated by Hong Kong’s protests, which raged for six straight months, upended the financial hub’s reputation for stability and left deep ideological scars that remain to this day.

In Wallace’s award winning series, multiple photographs were taken during the most intense stage of the protests in November when hundreds of demonstrators battled riot police on the besieged campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Here Wallace, 41, details how these remarkable photos were taken:

Read more
AFP / Julio Cesar Aguilar

Love and fear of dying in the time of coronavirus

Marlowe Hood Sunday 19 April 2020

"I have long assumed that I would one day succumb to a lung infection.  A nearly fatal bout of tuberculosis when I was four left my lungs vulnerable to pathogens, whether bacterial or viral," writes Marlowe Hood, who covers health, science and environment for AFP in Paris.

"As I watched the coronavirus creep across the globe from ground zero in central China... I felt the target on my back grow bigger: male, 64 years old, overweight, prone to lung infection." 

Read more
  • AFP / Hector Retamal
  • AFP / Miguel Medina
  • AFP / Luis Acosta
  • AFP / Gary Ramage

AFP in the time of coronavirus

Phil Chetwynd Saturday 11 April 2020

"It was the arresting image of an elderly man in a face mask lying dead on a pavement in Wuhan which told us that perhaps it would be different this time," writes AFP Global News Director Phil Chetwynd.

"It was January 30 and AFP journalists had been covering the increasingly dystopian scenes in the Chinese megapolis. Now it suddenly felt out of control, bigger than we imagined."

Read more
AFP / Mohamad Ali Harissi

The gun in the toilet

Mohamad Ali Harissi Wednesday 1 April 2020

"When the novel coronavirus started spreading in neighboring Iran in February, Iraqis immediately turned to sarcasm. One comment stood out: what could it possibly do to us? We have seen it all," writes Mohamad Ali Harissi, deputy bureau chief for the Gulf and Yemen.

"It was my first time back in Baghdad since being posted there in 2014. The city was so different. Yet it hadn’t changed at all." 

Read more