Washington – Today, Radio Free Asia (FRG) Leadership has informed its leave and the majority of their additional staff that they would be dismissed, from May 9. At the end of May, half of the Linguistic Services of RFA will no longer produce or will no longer publish new content: RFA Tibetan, Burmese, Uyghur – which is already the only week in the independent world. In addition, cessation operations will be RFA English Service and Asia Fact Check Lab, a special unit focused on the selection of false stories groaned by the Chinese Communist Party. These movements are drastic but necessary, said the president and chief executive officer of the FRG, Bay Fang, given the delays in the reception of his funds from the American agency for the world media (USAGM), despite a court order last week.
“We are in an unreasonable situation,” said Fang. “Because we can no longer count on the USAGM to pay our funds such as the congress in Congress, we will have to start mass layoffs and let the whole language services darken next week.
“We lose journalists who have announced the news of the PCC genocide against Uighurs, who risked their lives covering a civil war in Myanmar, which revealed human trafficking networks in Southeast Asia, and which highlighted religious freedom in Tibet.
“Their invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to maintain the truth so that dictators and despots do not have the last word. Our priority remains to preserve our business and our mission mandated by Congress, while protecting our most vulnerable journalists. ”
Next Friday, more than 280 staff will be dismissed, nearly 90% of the US RFA workforce. Abroad, the service will terminate nearly 20 positions. Additional endings will continue throughout the month. Each department and level of the organization is affected. In addition, the licensed staff will have their health insurance towards the end of May.
Following the termination of its subsidy agreement by the USAGM on March 15, RFA put three quarters of its US employees on unpaid leave and dismissed most of its entrepreneurs abroad. Shortly after, he brought legal action to receive his funds appropriate by the Congress before the court. The Ministry of Justice appealed last week’s decision to restore the FRG subsidy and financing agreement. Last night, the United States Court of Appeal for the DC circuit temporarily granted a request for an administrative suspension on the previous decision, effectively enabling USAGM to continue to remember the funding of the FRG and its Sister Gertwork Network broadcasting networks.
In an article published today, the day before World Press Freedom Day, on The New York Times Website, Fang presented the case for the value of RFA for American interests and what its potential disappearance means, given the sacrifice of its staff: “”[T]Courageous journalists, who have risked everything to tell the truth to dictators abroad, can be silenced by the very nation whose belief in press freedom inspired them in the first place. »»