The Journalist Par Excellence
Award-winning journalist Megha Rajagopalan is on a mission to unearth the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Her unyielding quest led to the internationally acclaimed Xinjiang series that exposed a jolting truth in 2020. The series saw its inception in 2017, shortly after whispers of China detaining thousands of Muslims in its Xinjiang area started doing rounds. At a time when the country vehemently denied the existence of these internment camps, Rajagopalan, an American journalist of Indian-descent, became one of the first reporters to visit them. The government soon caught a whiff of what was happening. They tried to silence her, revoked her visa, and ejected her from the country. All by herself, Rajagopalan had threatened the entire mission. Refusing to be silenced, she then launched a unique investigation from London. Eventually, she managed to expose the fortified detention camps of Xinjiang and one of the worst human rights violations of our time. Rajagopalan, who works at BuzzFeed News, has more than a decade of experience in the field and has always brought the same firebrand of journalism to each one of her projects. She has extensively reported from 23 countries in Asia and the Middle East and specialises in investigative projects at the intersection of human rights and technology.
Rajagopalan has won a plethora of prizes for her stories ranging from the North Korean nuclear crisis to the peace process in Afghanistan. She won the Human Rights Press Award in 2018 for finding and visiting an internment camp for Uyghur Muslims in China. In 2019, she clinched a Mirror Award for an investigation that uncovered the links between Facebook and religious violence in Sri Lanka.
Power Move
In 2021, Rajagopalan’s controversial series won the Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting category. For the one-of-its-kind investigation, she partnered with two contributors– Alison Killing, a licensed architect with specialisation in forensic analysis of architecture and buildings’ satellite images, and Christo Buschek, a programmer who builds custom-made tools for data journalists. The three of them analysed thousands of satellite images of the Xinjiang region and ultimately identified more than 260 structures that happened to be fortified detention camps. Their work exposed a vast infrastructure of prisons and internment camps secretly built to detain thousands of Muslims in China’s restive Xinjiang region. It takes unbelievable courage to do what Rajagopalan has been doing. She is hungry for truth, determined to charge forward, and committed to uncovering stories that would otherwise never see the light of the day. She is a journalist par excellence.
The POPxo Power Women List is an annual list that celebrates incredible Indian women from diverse domains who make power moves that have a real impact. With The POPxo Power Women List 2022, we celebrate 22 phenomenal women. To see the entire list, click here.
