Danish Siddiqui: Reuters journalist called out for clicking burning pyres killed by Taliban

Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed by Taliban on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander said.

According to Reuters’ reports, Afghan special forces had been fighting to retake the main market area of Spin Boldak when Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer were killed in what they described as Taliban crossfire. Siddiqui had been embedded as a journalist since earlier this week with Afghan special forces based in the southern province of Kandahar and had been reporting on fighting between Afghan commandos and Taliban fighters.

Siddiqui was part of the Reuters photography team who won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis. A Reuters photographer since 2010, what was called as Siddiqui’s “work” spanned selectively covering crisis including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugees crisis, India’s COVID-19 outbreak, the Hong Kong protests and Nepal earthquakes.

Back in April, 2021, Danish Siddiqui was widely called out for his photograph covering burning pyres of those who died due to COVID-19, in New Delhi, India. Many shared the photograph with ire, talking about the insensitivity of the journalist who captured it.

People are dying due to COVID-19 all over the world, but the morbid obsession over their funeral pyres is somehow seen only in India, for left-leaning domestic and white publications that could not really care much to accord dignity to Indians, especially, to Hindus.

Siddiqui, who won the Pulitzer Prize for covering the Rohingya refugee, was part of a team of journalists that captured images of the refugees at their most vulnerable back in 2017. He graduated with a degree in Economics from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi.