Radio Free Asia suspends its operation, in a win to authoritarians

Author: Devin Windelspecht, MSc

November 7, 2025

HRRC expresses grave concern on the suspension of Radio Free Asia (RFA)’s operations. It calls on the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to restore government contracts previously approved by congress that fund Radio Free Asia and other USAGM-funded media outlets.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) headquarters in Washington, March 18, 2025. [Image credit: Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA]

Radio Free Asia (RFA) has suspended its operations for the first time in its nearly thirty year history as a result of massive government cuts to its budget, bringing to a halt to decades of reporting that has shed light on human rights abuses and held authoritarians to account across the continent. 

The private media outlet, which is funded by the U.S. government, had earned a reputation for leading hard-hitting investigations on human rights abuses by authoritarian regimes in China, Myanmar, and North Korea, including the mass internment of Uyghurs in China, attempts by the Chinese government to cover up Covid-19 fatalities, and atrocities carried out by government soldiers in Myanmar. 

As a result of the suspension, RFA will close its remaining news bureaus in operation and lay off much of its staff, RFA said in a statement. The outlet had already reduced its editorial team by 90% as a result of the funding cuts, and had operated on a skeleton staff before being forced to suspend its operations. 

Radio Free Asia has been a target of the Trump administration since March, when the network’s congressionally approved contracts were frozen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees congressional spending for media. Alongside RFA, government-funded outlets like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the Middle East Broadcast Network, and the Cuba-focused outlet Radio Marti saw their funding cut and reporters laid off. 

The decision has been challenged in court, with affected outlet RFE/RL arguing that the move violates the U.S. Constitution, as it withholds money already authorized by Congress. 

Press freedom organizations have decried USAGM’s cancellation of international media funding. Clayton Weimers, Executive Director of Reporters Without Borders USA, called the funding cuts “an unprecedented gift from Trump to the dictatorial censorship regimes in countries like China and Iran.” The Committee to Protect Journalists warned that the cuts left journalists affiliated with the affected outlets “trapped in countries where their association with USAGM-funded entities makes them targets of state repression.” At least one former Voice of America reporter has already been arrested following the outlet’s dismantling. 

The Trump Administration has said that the outlets, first established during the Cold War to bring reliable information to censored media environments in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, are “fake news companies” that “parrot the talking points of America’s adversaries.”

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Glossary 

• Adversary – competitor or enemy. 

• Association – relationship. 

• Atrocity – a gross violation of human rights. 

• Authoritarian regimes – nations which are ruled by an individual or group without meaningful checks and balances to their power. 

• Censorship – blocking or making prohibitively difficult to access non-government approved and independent information. 

• Cold War – a state of hostility, but not open conflict, between the U.S.-led NATO alliance and the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact and other communist countries. The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

• Decry – denounce or condemn. 

• Dictatorial – led by a group or person with absolute power

• Dismantle – take apart. 

• Fatality – death. 

• Human rights abuses – violations of the personal rights of an individual, including but not limited to the rights to dignity, freedom, or protections from torture. 

• Internment – holding individuals in confinement against their will. 

• Press freedom – the ability for independent media to operate without fear of government censorship, arrest or violence. 

• Repression – the use of force or law, such as by a government, to silence opposition and independent voices. 

• Skeleton staff – the bare minimum amount of people required to keep an organization functioning. 

• Unprecedented – without a prior example of occuring. 

• Violate – breaks the rules or laws of.