Ethiopian journalist Solan Kolli has won the Rory Peck prize for his coverage of the devastating conflict in the Tigray region of his home country. The 32 year old Freelancer, won in the news category for a report commissioned by AFP on massacres of civilians. In a video recording, Solan said the award has come to him as a surprise bearing in mind other journalists in the category has performed well in the year under review. Kolli, who has been covering Ethiopia with video reports for seven years, was the first to show images of the mass graves at Mai-Kadra, where hundreds of civilians were massacred a year ago. He dedicated the prize to victims of war around the world, “in particular those brave children, women and men in northern Ethiopia whose pain and suffering are featured in my news stories”. This is the fifth time since 2014 that a journalist working for AFP has won the Rory Peck prize, launched in 1995 to give freelance video journalists greater recognition. The award is in memory of Rory Peck, a video journalist killed in Moscow in 1993.
SOURCE: AFRICA NEWS