India condemns killing of Danish Siddiqui at UNSC

  • India strongly condemns the killing of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Danish Siddiqui in Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said at the UN Security Council, as he expressed serious concern over the violence against humanitarian workers in situations of armed conflict.
  •  The Indian foreign secretary’s remark came during a debate on “Protection of Civilians in armed conflict: Preserving humanitarian space” at the top UN body. He also extended condolences to the families of the 99 humanitarian workers who were reported to have been killed over the last year and he strongly condemned attacks against humanitarian personnel.
  • Danish Siddiqui, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photojournalist for news agency Reuters, was killed, while covering clashes between Afghan security forces and the Taliban in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
  • In 2018, Danish Siddiqui and his colleague Adnan Abidi became the first Indians to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis.
  • Siddiqui’s work has been widely published across global publications including New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic Magazine. Siddiqui had covered the 2020 Delhi riots, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Nepal earthquake in 2015, the Battle of Mosul in 2016-17, and the 2019–2020 protests in Hong Kong.