Shawn W. Crispin/CPJ Senior Southeast Asia Representative
CPJ Senior Southeast Asia Representative Shawn W. Crispin is based in Bangkok, Thailand, where he has worked as a journalist and editor for more than 15 years. He has led CPJ missions throughout the region and is the author of several CPJ special reports.
Philippines makes premature claim to end of impunity in journalist murders
When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural classified the 2009 Maguindanao massacre — the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ — as “resolved,” Philippine authorities were quick to echo and tout this designation. Too quick, as it turned out. UNESCO’s then-assistant director-general for communication and information, Moez Chackchouk, made the official…
ABS-CBN head of news describes losses to journalists, Philippine public amid station closure
Regina Reyes says she had a “journalist’s premonition” that something bad would happen the day before Philippine authorities ordered her ABS-CBN news station to cease and desist operations on May 5. That evening, ABS-CBN, the nation’s largest news organization, said goodbye to its viewing audience and signed off the air. “Up to now, that screen…
Malaysian journalist faces six years in prison over COVID-19 Facebook posts
When Malaysian journalist Wan Noor Hayati Wan Alias criticized a government decision to allow a cruise ship with Chinese tourists to dock and disembark at the coastal city of Penang in late January, a time when China was at the epicenter of the COVID-19 global pandemic, she was criminally charged with causing a public panic.
From conflict zones to courtrooms, Myanmar’s journalists are under fire
Hopes for greater press freedom when Myanmar moved to quasi-democratic rule were quickly quashed with the jailing in 2017 of two Reuters reporters. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have their freedom again, but journalists and press freedom activists who met with CPJ’s Senior Southeast Asia Representative Shawn Crispin in Yangon in June said that…
Rappler-CIA plot claim is attempt to cut funding, Philippine journalists say
First were the politically motivated state charges that funding provided to the news website Rappler by a U.S. philanthropic foundation represented a violation of constitutional provisions barring foreign control or ownership of Philippine media.
Mission Journal: Duterte leads tri-pronged attack on press amid condemnation of controversial policies
Pia Randa is in Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte’s crosshairs. At presidential press conferences, Duterte has repeatedly singled out the reporter by name and referred to Rappler, the news site where she works, as “fake news” and her reporting as “corrupt” and “biased” against his administration.
Threats, arrests, and access denied as Myanmar backtracks on press freedom
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Esther Htusan is no longer safe to report from her home country, Myanmar. The Associated Press reporter fled the country late last year after being threatened for her critical reporting on various topics that authorities deem sensitive, from the ethnic Rohingya refugee exodus, the military’s controversial counterinsurgency operations in Rakhine State, to…
Myanmar: One year under Suu Kyi, press freedom lags behind democratic progress
When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her long-persecuted National League for Democracy party won elected office in November 2015, bringing an end to nearly five decades of authoritarian military rule, many local journalists saw the democratic result as a de facto win for press freedom.
‘I wanted to stay and fight for my beliefs’ says jailed Vietnamese blogger forced into exile
Vietnamese journalist and religious activist Dang Xuan Dieu was granted early release January 12 from a 13-year prison sentence on anti-state charges filed over his critical reporting. As with recent early releases of other jailed Vietnamese journalists, Dieu was forced to immediately board a plane and go into exile as a condition for his freedom.