Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, May 6: Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service, one of the few independent news sources available to Tibetans inside Tibet and in exile, will cease operations at the end of this month amid unprecedented budget cuts and legal battles between RFA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). This closure follows the Voice of America’s Tibetan service halting operations in late March.
The closure comes as part of a massive restructuring announced on May 2, “By the end of May, half of RFA’s language services will no longer produce or publish new content: RFA Tibetan, Burmese, Uyghur – which is the world’s only independent Uyghur language news service – and Lao (which closed down this week already). Also, ceasing operations will be RFA English service and Asia Fact Check Lab” the statement read, affecting more than 280 staff members, approximately 90 per cent of RFA’s U.S.-based workforce.
“We are losing journalists who broke the news about the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghurs, who risked their lives covering a civil war in Myanmar, who exposed human trafficking networks in Southeast Asia, and who brought to light the crackdown on religious freedom in Tibet.” said Bay Fang, RFA President and CEO, in a statement last Friday. “Their invaluable work is part of RFA’s responsibility to uphold the truth so that dictators and despots don’t have the last word.”
For decades, RFA’s Tibetan Service has been an important source of independent news for Tibetans living under Chinese rule and in exile, providing coverage of human rights abuses, religious freedom restrictions, and cultural preservation efforts that are censored inside Tibet.
The service has documented the systematic erosion of Tibetan language rights, restrictions on Buddhist practice, environmental degradation on the Tibetan plateau, and surveillance of Tibetan communities — reporting that has frequently drawn Beijing’s ire.
The layoffs come after USAGM terminated its grant agreement with RFA on March 15, prompting a lawsuit by RFA to receive its congressionally appropriated funds. Despite a District Court ruling last week ordering the reinstatement of RFA’s funding, the Justice Department appealed the decision.
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit temporarily granted a motion for an administrative stay on the previous ruling, effectively allowing USAGM to continue withholding funding from RFA and its sister grantee network Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Appellate Court judges Neomi Rao and Gregory Katsas ruled that the lower court lacked jurisdiction over USAGM operations, delivering what Kari Lake, a special advisor to USAGM appointed by President Trump, called “a major victory” for the administration.
The closure of the Tibetan service is part of a larger crisis affecting U.S. international broadcasting under the Trump administration. In addition to RFA’s Tibetan service, the organisation’s Uyghur service, the world’s only independent Uyghur-language news operation will also cease operations, along with RFA’s English service and the Asia Fact Check Lab, which specialised in analysing Chinese government propaganda.
“We are in an unconscionable situation,” Fang said. “Because we can no longer rely on USAGM to disburse our funds as Congress intended, we will have to begin mass layoffs and let entire language services go dark in the next week.”
In a piece published in The New York Times website on May 2, Fang lamented that “these brave journalists, who have risked everything to speak truth to dictators abroad, may be silenced by the very nation whose belief in press freedom inspired them in the first place.”
