Freelance TV journalists Max Stahl and Carmela Baranowska have been honoured at this year's Rory Peck Awards for their reporting on the struggle for independence in East Timor.
Mr Stahl picked up the hard ews and Rory Peck awards at the ceremony in London last night, for his coverage of the East Timor independence referendum and its bloody aftermath in September last year. The footage went out on ITN news bulletins in the UK.
Ms Baranowska, an Australian, won the Rory Peck features award. Fresh out of film school, she spent three months in East Timor last year filming the final days of the Indonesian occupation for two documentaries broadcast by SBS Dateline.
Both winners took self-funded trips to East Timor and were among the handful of journalists who remained on the island after the referendum, when pro-Indonesian militia gunmen went on a murderous rampage.
They were on hand to film dramatic footage of the evacuation of the UN compound in the capital Dili, which left local civilians at the mercy of the Indonesian army and militiamen.
Mr Stahl is a veteran TV journalist who filmed the 1991 massacre of East Timorese civilians in Dili by the Indonesian army. Describing how he covered the unfolding drama last year, he said: "Fearing immediate death at the hands of the militia and military once the UN had gone, hundreds of refugees in the compound fled to a steep rocky hill behind a cover of darkness... I joined them with a small infrared-capable DV camera."
One of the judges, freelance cameraman Ken Guest, said of Mr Stahl: "To stay in Dili when everyone else had left and go outside to the UN compound to tell the whole story is very brave. But to leave it and spend time with the people in the hills is fabulous."
Ms Baranowski said of her experiences: "I wanted to be closely connected to people and events, to be in the middle of any given situation - however difficult, dramatic or humorous."
Another judge, BBC World presenter Nik Gowing, praised Ms Baranowska for "being there to the end of the story when most crews were forced into the UN compound. She stuck with people, recording them, moving between both sides".
The annual Rory Peck Awards was established by the Rory Peck Trust to celebrate and raise awareness of the work of freelance broadcast journalists. The trust subsidises hostile environment training and offers insurance advice for freelances, as well as providing financial support to the families of those killed or seriously injured in the field.