USA: How ‘Defunding’ the US Agency for Global Media sacrifices freedom of expression for millions

Radio Free Asia (RFA) was set up in 1996, providing news to people in China, North Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, broadcasting in 10 languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Burmese, Korean, Lao, Khmer, Tibetan, Uyghur, Vietnamese, and English. Its founding mission was to enhance the promotion of information and ideas, and to support freedom and democracy. Radio Free Asia also runs the Asia Fact Check Lab, which operates in English and Chinese and coordinates with Russian language services at sister USAGM outlets. It plays a leading role in promoting information integrity in the face of rampant information threats from China, Russia, and other actors.

Forced closure of an institution established to promote access to information, freedom, and democracy is nothing more than an abdication of its historical mission and an embrace of the opposite. With the end to funding, this information will not only be absent, but these governments will also be given new opportunities to further muzzle journalism, public interest reporting, and the work of civil society organisations. There were reports that the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the US announcement, with one Chinese Party-state English language propaganda outlet noting that the ‘lie factory’ had been ‘discarded by its own government like a dirty rag’.

Not only is RFA one of the few outlets available in closed societies broadcasting in Uyghur, Tibetan, Vietnamese, serving a critical role in disseminating independent information into tightly controlled media environments, it also broadcasts factual information from closed societies to the rest of the world. RFA and VOA reporting on persecution against Tibetans, Uyghurs, and others is often the first line of documentation toward holding Chinese perpetrators of gross human rights abuses and international crimes accountable. Closing off this important conduit for information and documentation would supercharge impunity for the world’s worst human rights regimes.

Many RFA and VOA journalists working in the US are Afghan, Burmese, Uyghur, Uzbek, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and others whose work permits are tied to their employment and could be forcibly sent back to countries where they are at risk of torture, imprisonment, or worse. Turning its back on these diaspora journalists is more than a moral outrage, it is a violation of international customary law on non-refoulement, which prohibits sending anyone back to a country where their ‘life or freedom would be threatened’.

Through its radio, television, internet and mobiles services, Radio Free Europe was initially set up to provide information and news for people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. RFE’s impact in Central and Eastern Europe during this period, when its journalists were under surveillance and faced attacks, cannot be overstated. Jan Nowak Jezioranski, the legendary ‘courier from Warsaw’ who risked his life to deliver crucial intelligence from war-torn Warsaw to London during World War II, led RFE’s Polish section after the war. ‘In the darkest years of Stalinism, [and] the Security Office’s omnipotence, repressions, distortion of history and secrecy, Radio Free Europe gave Poles a sense that someone, somewhere, knows the truth and speaks the truth; that the crimes of the regime will be named and the perpetrators punished,’ he said. For many years throughout the Cold War, RFE was a lifeline: the only source of independent, reliable information, and a powerful symbol of freedom.

Today, it reports from some of the most challenging media environments in the world, serving 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Central Asia republics, and the Caucasus. With a mandate to defy censorship and champion independent media, its journalists provide accurate, professional news and analysis, often in the face of extreme threats and at great personal risk. In more recent times, RFE has adapted its work to tackle new threats to media freedom – for example, setting up an office in Hungary as Prime Minister Viktor Orban set out to destroy all independent media.

Radio Liberty has also been important for English and Russian language coverage of the persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, as well as resistance and repression of their family members in Central Asia, especially in Kazakhstan. This has played a critical role in raising awareness of potential accountability for China’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others. Furthermore, RFE/RL reporting has contributed important documentation on China’s broader adverse influence on human rights in Eurasia.

RFE/RL has been a reliable source of information for many in war-torn Ukraine, with a July 2023 Gallup World Poll confirming that about 14% of Ukrainians regularly accessed its reporting. At the end of 2024, the outlet employed at least 100 people based in Ukraine. Russia placed RFE/RL on its ‘undesirable organisations’ because of its status as a ‘foreign agent’. Its journalists continue to face threats from the Kremlin.

The Czech Republic’s Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský urged the European Union to help maintain the operations of RFE/RL, which are headquartered in Prague. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called Radio Free Europe ‘a beacon of democracy’. Advocates for press freedom, including a group of European parliamentarians who have committed to collectively working to bolster democratic institutions and support the rule of law, as well as reform European institutions, have called for the European Union to take ‘immediate action’ to support RFE/Rl. Support, they say, ‘could involve direct funding, facilitating partnerships, or integrating these entities into existing EU frameworks dedicated to promoting media pluralism and freedom’.