KIM Phuc Phan Thi, the woman who for nearly five decades has been known as the “Napalm Girl” from a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during the Vietnam War, was yesterday awarded the Dresden Peace Prize for her activism.
The photo by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut shows Kim Phuc, who now lives in Canada, at the age of 9 running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack in 1972.
The Dresden Peace Prize, awarded annually since 2010 in the city’s famed Semperoper Opera House, includes e10000 (R155700), which will flow into Kim Phuc’s foundation supporting schools, orphanages and medical facilities in different parts of the world.
“When I am alone, I avoid the image,” Kim Phuc said in reference to the photograph that catapulted her into the public eye. “But I know that it allows me to work for peace, and that is my vision.”
Her foundation’s project is a library for children in the village near where the iconic picture was taken. dpa African News Agency (ANA)