
Radio Free Asia

Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a United States government-funded news service that broadcasts radio programs and publishes online news, information and commentary to readers and listeners in Asia. The service, which provides editorially independent reporting, has the mission of providing accurate and uncensored reporting to countries in Asia that have poor media environments and limited protections for press freedom and freedom of speech.
Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, it was established by the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 with the stated aim of "promoting democratic values and human rights", and countering the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as providing media reports about North Korea. It is funded and supervised by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors), an independent agency of the United States government, which also supervises other media outlets such as Voice of America. Some commentators have characterized United States international broadcasters such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America as U.S. propaganda.
RFA distributes content in ten Asian languages for audiences in China, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma."The Economist" and "The New York Times" have praised RFA for reporting on the Chinese government's persecution of the Uyghurs.
History.
Radio Free Asia (1951-1955).
From 1951 to 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency, through the Committee for Free Asia, operated a news agency named Radio Free Asia (RFA) which broadcast anti-Communist propaganda. The news agency, despite sharing the same name as the Radio Free Asia begun in 1994, is neither affiliated nor historically linked to it, with the latter being operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
RFA first broadcast in 1951 from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines. Broadcasts were made in three Chinese dialects, as well as in English. RFA maintained offices in Tokyo, and aside from in the Philippines, broadcasts were also made from Dhaka and Karachi, Pakistan. Although intended to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda into mainland China, as well as to overseas Chinese and others, the news agency faced difficulties in doing so. In China personal radio ownership was low, and in other parts of Asia, radio reception was poor. In 1953, the Committee for Free Asia decided to terminate RFA, with it finally going off the air in 1955.
In 1971 CIA involvement ended and all responsibilities for the then-defunct radio operations, which were formally transferred to a presidentially appointed Board for International Broadcasting (BIB).
Radio Free Asia (1994-Present).
With the passage of International Broadcasting Act in 1994, RFA was brought under auspices of the United States Information Agency where it remained until the agency's cessation of broadcasting duties and transitioned to U.S. Department of State operated BBG in 1999. In May 1994, President Bill Clinton announced the continuation of Radio Free Asia after 2009 was dependent on its increased international broadcasting and ability to reach its audience. In September 2009, the 111th Congress amended the International Broadcasting Act to allow a one-year extension of the operation of Radio Free Asia.
The current Radio Free Asia is a US-funded organization, incorporated in March 1996, and began broadcasting in September 1996. Although senators debated a name change, Richard Richter, the then president of Radio Free Asia, was instructed to change the name back from Asia-Pacific Network to Radio Free Asia, as "we must have the courage to confront tyranny, and to do so under the banner of freedom." Radio Free Asia was forced to change in part due to financial pressures from the US government, for although they operate with an independent board, their money mostly comes from the Treasury.
RFA broadcasts in nine languages, via shortwave, satellite transmissions, medium-wave (AM and FM radio), and through the Internet. The first transmission was in Mandarin Chinese and it is RFA's most broadcast language at twelve hours per day. RFA also broadcasts in Cantonese, Tibetan (Kham, Amdo, and Uke dialects), Uyghur, Burmese, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer (to Cambodia) and Korean (to North Korea). The Korean service launched in 1997 with Jaehoon Ahn as its founding director.
After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, American interest in starting a government broadcasting organization grew. The International Broadcasting Act was passed by the Congress of the United States in 1994. Radio Free Asia is formally a private, non-profit corporation. In 2017, RFA and other networks, such as Voice of America, were put under the then newly created U.S. Agency for Global Media that also sends representatives to its board of directors.
Like other organizations under the supervision of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, RFA has seen a decline in funding of about 20% since 2019, resulting in a corresponding cut in staff from 253 to 197.
International response.
Radio jamming and Internet blocking.
Since broadcasting began in 1996, Chinese authorities have consistently jammed RFA broadcasts.
Three RFA reporters were denied access to China to cover U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit in June 1998. The Chinese embassy in Washington had initially granted visas to the three but revoked them shortly before President Clinton left Washington en route to Beijing. The White House and United States Department of State filed complaints with Chinese authorities over the matter but the reporters ultimately did not make the trip.
The Vietnamese-language broadcast signal was also jammed by the Vietnamese government since the beginning. Human rights legislation has been proposed in Congress that would allocate money to counter the jamming. Research by the OpenNet Initiative, a project that monitors Internet filtering by governments worldwide, showed that the Vietnamese-language portion of the Radio Free Asia website was blocked by both of the tested ISPs in Vietnam, while the English-language portion was blocked by one of the two ISPs.
To address radio jamming and Internet blocking by the governments of the countries that it broadcasts to, the RFA website contains instruction on how to create anti-jamming antennas and information on web proxies.
On March 30, 2010, China's domestic internet censor, known as the Great Firewall, temporarily blocked all Google searches in China, due to an unintentional association with the long-censored term "rfa". According to Google, the letters, associated with Radio Free Asia, were appearing in the URLs of all Google searches, thereby triggering China's filter to block search results.
Arrests of Uyghur journalists' relatives.
In 2014–2015 China arrested three brothers of RFA Uyghur Service journalist Shohret Hoshur. Their jailing was widely described by Western publishers as Chinese authorities' efforts to target Hoshur for his reports on otherwise unreported violent events of ethnic Han-Uyghur tensions in China's Xinjiang region. Much larger numbers of relatives of RFA's Uygur-language staff have since been detained, including the family of Gulchehra Hoja.
RFA is the only station outside China that broadcasts in the Uygur-language. It has been recognized by journalists of "The Atlantic", "The Washington Post", "The New York Times", and "The Economist" for playing a role in exposing Xinjiang re-education camps. In particular, "The New York Times" regards RFA as one of the few reliable sources of information about Xinjiang.
In 2018, Chinese authorities forcibly disappeared two brothers, and five cousins of a RFA journalist.
Mission.
Radio Free Asia's functions, as listed in , are:
Additionally, the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 (Title III of ), which authorised the creation of the RFA, contains the following paragraph:
The RFA's mission statement is outlined on its website as follows:
Criticism.
In 1999, Catharin Dalpino of the Brookings Institution, who served in the Clinton State Department as a deputy assistant secretary deputy for human rights, called Radio Free Asia "a waste of money." "Wherever we feel there is an ideological enemy, we're going to have a Radio Free Something," she says. Dalpino said she has reviewed scripts of Radio Free Asia's broadcasts and views the station's reporting as unbalanced. "They lean very heavily on reports by and about dissidents in exile. It doesn't sound like reporting about what's going on in a country. Often, it reads like a textbook on democracy, which is fine, but even to an American it's rather propagandistic."
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service of the U.S. government, official state-controlled newspapers in China have run editorials claiming Radio Free Asia is a CIA broadcast operation, as was the case with the first Radio Free Asia.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency has referred to Radio Free Asia as "reptile broadcasting services." Kim Chol-min, third secretary of North Korea, in statement submitted at the United Nations, accused the United States of engaging in "psychological warfare" with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea through RFA.
Following the Burmese Saffron Revolution in the fall of 2007, the Myanmar junta held rallies attended by thousands holding signs that condemned "external interference" and accused Radio Free Asia, the Voice of America, and the BBC of "airing a skyful of lies." In October 2007, Burmese state-run newspaper "New Light of Myanmar" singled out "big powers" and Radio Free Asia, among other international broadcasters, as inciting protesters during the Saffron Revolution.