Using online journalism to evade government censorship in Malaysia.
Co-founder and editor of Malaysiakini, Gan is a pioneer in the use of the Internet to evade government restrictions on the press. With the major media in Malaysia owned or controlled by the ruling coalition, and a strict licensing system in place to shut down any publications that do not follow the official line, self-censorship is the norm. Gan uses the relatively unfettered space of the Internet to publish a newspaper that challenges the existing order. Before launching the provocative online publication in November, 1999, Gan worked as a print journalist. In 1995, he led a team of investigative reporters who exposed the deaths of 59 inmates in a migrant worker detention camp. When his editors refused to run the reports, Gan gave the information to a human rights activist, who released it and is now facing a possible jail term for "publishing false news." Gan was one of five journalists arrested in 1996 for covering the Second Asia Pacific Conference on East Timor. He spent five days in jail and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. When his editors spiked a column he wrote detailing his arrest and those of conference organizers and participants, he resigned in protest. Gan's year-old online publication, Malaysiakini, is providing a new model for press freedom under authoritarian regimes.