AP photographers Rafiq, Eranga among Pulitzer Prize finalists for Sri Lanka crisis coverage

Two Associated Press photographers, Eranga Jayawardena and Rafiq Maqbool, were named finalists for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in the ‘Breaking News Photography’ category for their coverage of Sri Lanka’s political crisis.

They were handpicked as finalists for the “compelling visual narrative documenting public fury over Sri Lanka’s economic collapse, including clashes between the protesters and police, the takeover of government buildings and jubilation as protesters occupied the plush presidential mansion.”

The AP images from Sri Lanka captured the full range of human emotion: Protesters pumping their fists in the air shouting anti-government slogans, shielding themselves from tear gas and water cannons, crowds of Sri Lankans storming the office of the prime minister after the president fled the country and others celebrating inside the president’s official residence by jumping in the pool and using the gym equipment.

Eranga Jayawardena, born April 11, 1978 and brought up in Colombo, and has been a witness and a recorder though news photography of key natural, socio-political and entertainment events for more than 20 years of his life.

Jayawardena, in 1996, started taking up assignments while still at school for major local newspapers in Colombo and they mostly comprised of politically motivated ethnicity based violent events.

In 2002 Jayawardena joined Associated Press and has been responsible for the photographic coverage of Sri Lanka and neighbouring Maldives. He has covered the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war and human rights issues, Commonwealth Games 2010 held in New Delhi, London Olympics in 2012, ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, Public referendum in the Maldives to transform the state into a multi-party democracy after 30 years of one-part rule are some of his significant assignments that got a global reach.

Jayawardena is a diplomate in photography earned from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and has master’s qualifications in Economic Development, Conflict and Peace Studies from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, Rafiq Maqbool is a staff photographer for Associated Press and has been based in Mumbai, India since 2009. For AP, he has covered some of South Asia’s most troubled hotspots including his homeland of Kashmir.

Maqbool was in Sri Lanka in 2005 to cover the tsunami-affected areas, in 2009 to cover the end of the Sri Lankan civil war and most recently in 2022, to document yet again, another political upheaval in the country.

The Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2023 went to the photography staff of the Associated Press for the “unique and urgent images from the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the devastation of Mariupol after other news organizations left, victims of the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the resilience of the Ukrainian people who were able to flee.”

-with inputs from agencies

Protesters storm then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office, demanding his resignation after former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country amid economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

A Sri Lankan protester waves the national flag from the rooftop of then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office, demanding his resignation after former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country amid economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)