The drive to dismantle U.S. government-funded news outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, is a major blow
U.S. lawmakers and rights advocates say the Trump administration's drive to dismantle U.S. government-funded news outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, is a major blow to Washington's hard-earned soft power globally at a time when Beijing is rushing to expand its sphere of influence.
Rights activists say the multilingual reporters of both VOA and RFA for decades shone light onto abuses by China and other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China's Uyghur Muslims. “Gutting Radio Free Asia and other U.S. Agency for Global Media platforms counters the principles of freedom our nation was founded on and cedes leverage to the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea and other regimes,“ Kim told China Watcher, a Politico newsletter.
Mon Mon Myat, a Burmese journalist, remembers when she first heard a Voice of America broadcast during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, when the government shut down the internet. It “felt like a light had been switched on” in the darkness, she told Reuters. RFA, in particular, had been a thorn in Beijing’s side, with its roster of Uyghur-speaking journalists helping to document what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said is the Chinese government’s “genocide” against the Muslim minority group, a claim Beijing vehemently denies.
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