Skip to main content

Cyprian Fernandes: Achievers: Courage in the face of death

Anthony Mascarenhas, journalist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neville Anthony Mascarenhas (10 July 1928 – 3 December 1986) was a Pakistani journalist and author. His works include exposés on the brutality of Pakistan's military during the 1971indepen-dence movement of Bangladesh, The Rape of Bangla Desh (1971) and Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood (1986). Mascarenhas was born into a Goan Catholic family in Belgaum, and educated in Karachi. He and his wife Yvonne Mascarenhas  had five children. He died in 1986.

Mascarenhas was a journalist who was the assistant editor at The Morning News (Karachi).  After collecting information on the atrocities committed in Bangladesh, he realised he could not publish the story in Pakistan and contacted Harold Evans of The Sunday Times. Before the publication of his report in 1971, he moved his family to Britain. Thereafter, he worked for 14 years with The Sunday Times. Afterwards, he was a freelance writer.

In 1972, he was awarded the Granada's Gerald Barry Award for lifetime achievement in journ-alism (ceremony on What The Papers Say), as well as the International Publishing Company's Special Award for reporting on the human rights violations committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War.

His article "Genocide" in The Sunday Times on 13 June 1971 is credited with
having "exposed for the first time the scale of the Pakistan army's brutal campaign to suppress its breakaway eastern province".

The BBC writes: "There is little doubt that Mascarenhas' reportage played its part in ending the war. It helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and encouraged India to play a decisive role.”  Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stating that Mascarenhas' article led her "to prepare the
ground for India's armed intervention".

The Bangladeshi government honoured Mascarenhas's contribution to the nation during the 1971 liberation war by preparing an official list of
names. – Frederick Noronha

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MORE photos of cricketers in Kenya added

More cricket photos added! Asians v Europeans, v Tanganyika, v Uganda, v East Africa, Rhodesia, etc some names missing! Photo Gallery of Kenya Cricket 23 photos: CM Gracias, Blaise d'Cunha Johnny Lobo! Ramanbhai Patel, Mehboob Ali, Basharat Hassan and hundreds others.  

Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands

  BOOK REVIEW   Pinto: Blood on Western and Kenyan hands   Review by Cyprian Fernandes     Pio Gama Pinto, Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927-1965 Edited by Shiraz Durrani [Vita Books, Kenya, 2018, 392 pp.   Pbk, £30, ISBN 978-9966-1890-0-4; distributed worldwide by African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com ]   Less than two years after independence from the British, on 24 February 1965, the Kenyan nationalist Pio Gama Pinto was gunned down in the driveway of his Nairobi home.   His young daughter watched helplessly in the back seat of the family car.   Pinto, a Member of Parliament at the time, was Kenya’s first political martyr.   One man was wrongly accused of his death, served several years in prison and was later released and compensated.   Since then no one has been charged with the murder.   Now the long-awaited book on Pio Gama Pinto is finally here, launched in Nairobi on 16 October 2018....

The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya

  The sanctuaries trying to save birds of prey from extinction in Kenya (Courtesy of Al Jazeera) Poison, deforestation and power lines have pushed the African raptor population to a 90 per cent decline in the last 40 years. Raptor technician John Kyalo Mwanzia rehabilitates a juvenile fish eagle to flight after it was treated for grounding injuries sustained in a territorial fight at the Lake Naivasha habitat, at Soysambu Raptor Centre. [Tony Karumba/AFP] Simon Thomsett tentatively removes a pink bandage from the wing of an injured bateleur, a short-tailed eagle from the African savannah, where birds of prey are increasingly at risk of extinction. “There is still a long way to go before healing,” Thomsett explains as he lifts up the bird’s dark feathers and examines the injury. “It was injured in the Maasai Mara national park, but we don’t know how,” says the 62-year-old vet who runs the Soysambu Raptor Centre in central Kenya. The 18-month-old eagle, with a dist...