Radio Free Asia terminates 90 percent of employees
With an audience of around 60 million readers and listeners, the radio station Radio Asia is known for its review of authoritarian steering and macemoning despots. Now its survival hangs on a thin thread. In March, Donald Trump wrote under a Executive order that ordered USAGM, The authority that distributes public funds to RFA and other media such as Radio Free Europe, to shrink its operations to a minimum.
Radio Free Asia announces that they are terminated over 280 employees because you can no longer pay wages.
The reduction means that journalists who have reviewed dictatorships and despots are now allowed to go, says Bay Fang, chairman of RFA, in a statement.
« We lose journalists who were first with the news of the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide against Uighurs (reporters) who risked life when reported from the civil war in Myanmar, which exposed human trading networks in Southeast Asia, and which shed the light on the oppression of religious freedom in Tibet. »
The leaders in China, on the other hand, are pleased that Trump withdraws the funds to Radio Free Asia. When the decision came in March cheered state media and nationalists who thanked « Comrade Trump ».
The reduction means that RFA’s broadcasts in Tibetan, Burmese, Uigurian and Lao are silent. RFA also shuts down the editorial board that has fact -organized Chinese state propaganda. All radio and television broadcasts cease. However, some will still be conveyed in social media and on the company’s website.
The message is coming Despite Radio Free Asia together with the radio station Voice of America and the media organization Middle East Broadcasting Network protested against the withdrawn funds in court and won. The judge ordered the funding to resume. But the Trump administration appealed and in anticipation of the next trial, future payments have been paused.
RFA was founded after the Second World War with the aim of reaching listeners and readers living in repressive and authoritarian communities. The goal was to represent democratic values and to respond to propaganda.
