Caen (AFP)

The 26th edition of the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents Prize opens Monday for a week including an "immersive trip" to the DRC and a tribute, in the presence of their relatives, to the Saudi Jamal Khashoggi and Irish Lyra McKee, journalists killed in 2018 and 2019.

"The big news is the hosting of a BBC team that will offer the public an immersive journey through the Congo through three 10-minute reports" in virtual reality, explained in August at a conference Press release in Bayeux (Calvados) Patrick Gomont, mayor of this municipality co-organizer of the Prize with the department and the region, from Monday to October 13th.

"You will hit rapids aboard a small boat cut in a tree trunk, you will cross the mountains by train and you will fly over the conflicts (in) a beautiful country but bruised", specify the organizers.

"The most difficult moment", a stele bearing the names of journalists killed in the year before will be like every year unveiled by Reporters Without Borders, continued the mayor. Relatives of Lyra McKee and Jamal Khashoggi will be present, the organizers said Thursday.

The 29-year-old Irish reporter was killed on 18 April 2019 in Londonderry on the Irish border, a victim of stray bullets from the splinter group New IRA in clashes with the police.

The 59-year-old Saudi editorialist and opponent was murdered by agents of his country in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018. His Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz was announced in Bayeux.

Another highlight, among the five evenings debates, the reporter Gwenlaouen Le Gouil will present in preview "Rohingyas: mechanics of crime", a "field survey" conducted for Arte, "to demonstrate the ethnic cleansing put in? against this minority, "Gomont added.

"Country with the largest oil reserves in the world", and "known for five years the worst crisis in its history", Venezuela will be part of both an AFP multimedia exhibition and an evening debate in the presence of journalists from AFP, RFI and France 24.

- Eight exhibitions -

A large-format photo exhibition will pay homage to the great Iranian reporter born on the streets of Bayeux, born of an Assyrian mother and Armenian father, Alfred Yaghobzadeh. He will make the trip to Bayeux.

A total of eight exhibitions are planned on Afghanistan, Aleppo, Gaza, Tiananmen, Srebrenica or the Iraqi and Syrian civilians who are victims of the aftermath of the war.

Thirty author reporters will be present for a book fair.

The 25th edition attracted nearly 40,000 people including 400 professionals, according to the organizers.

On the competition side, the organizers received nearly 350 reports, candidates for the 10 prizes that will be awarded on October 12 in print, radio and video. Fifty of them will be submitted to the international jury composed of forty journalists and chaired by British reporter-photographer Gary Knight.

About fifty years old, Gary Knight was an official photographer for Newsweek in the 1990s and 2000s.

Regarding the selected reports, "the topics mainly focus on Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Venezuela and also the Mexican border which are regions unfortunately still in difficulty", according to Patrick Gomont.

The photo, radio, television and press prizes are each endowed with 7.000 euros.

The poster of the 26th edition is a photo by Mahmud Hams of Agence France-Presse (AFP), the winner of the Prize in 2007 and 2018. Extracted from a report in Gaza in 2018, she represents a Palestinian who lost his legs throwing stones from his wheelchair during clashes with Israeli forces.

In 2018, besides Mahmoud Hams, Bayeux had rewarded Kenneth R. Rosen (The Atavist Magazine) in print, Gwendoline Debono (Europe 1) on radio, and reporters of France 2 and CNN in television.

© 2019 AFP