20100621
africanews

One of Africa's finest and most decorated investigative journalists Anas Aremeyaw Anas with the New Crusading Guide named winner of the 2010 Excellence in Journalism Award's Community Reporting category.

Anas took his award wearing a mask to protect his cover.

The reigning Ghana Journalist of the Year told AfricaNews: “I feel humbled but proud that I’m contributing to humanity. The best is yet to come and tell your readers to stay tune.”

“In selecting Mr. Anas for this award, we were awed by the courage and persistence he has shown over a decade in exposing the most vile and degrading treatment of human beings,” said Global Health Council President and CEO Jeffrey L. Sturchio. “We celebrate everything Mr. Anas has done to rescue and care for the most vulnerable among us.”

For more than 10 years, Anas has gone undercover many times in investigations that resulted in the imprisonment of people involved in human and sex trafficking and the abuse of mental patients. He describes his life’s work as “the quest to save humanity.”

U.S. President Barack Obama singled him out for praise in his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament on July 11, 2009: “Time and again, Ghanaians have chosen constitutional rule over autocracy, and shown a democratic spirit that allows the energy of your people to break through … We see that spirit in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth

The Ghanaian ace has established the “Trafficking Project” to tackle human trafficking networks and child prostitution rings in the West African region, and expanded it to include cases in which victims are trafficked from China and Korea and other parts of the globe to West Africa.

In 2008, he was responsible for breaking two major trafficking rings in Accra that were sending girls to Europe to be forced into prostitution. Working undercover for eight months, he exposed one ring's methods of transportation and the identities of immigration officials who were accepting bribes in return for overlooking fake visas and passports. Anas made recordings of his interactions, allowing him to produce evidence used to prosecute the traffickers. As a result of his undercover investigation and his collaboration with law enforcement, NGOs and other journalists, 17 Nigerian trafficking victims were rescued.

He won the Lorenzo Natali prize for 2009 including over 14 other international awards.