Steven Gan

Steven Gan "After graduating with a degree in economics at an Australian university, Mr. Gan spent four years as a freelance journalist in Hong Kong. He traveled extensively around Asia and covered the first Gulf War from Baghdad.  On returning to Malaysia in 1994, he joined The Sun as a special issues editor.  He wrote about the deaths of 59 inmates at the Semenyih immigration detention camp, but when The Sun refused to publish the story, he gave the information to human rights activist Irene Fernandez (Ms. Fernandez was subsequently charged with spreading "false news").  In 1996, Mr. Gan was adopted by Amnesty International as a “prisoner of conscience” after he was arrested at the Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor (Apcet II).  Soon after, he joined The Nation in Bangkok and was one of the newspaper's editors for two years before co-founding Malaysiakini in Malaysia in 1999. Mr. Gan won the “International Press Freedom Award” (2000) from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and Malaysiakini won the Brussels-based “International Press Institute's Media Pioneer Award” (2001). Mr. Gan was selected as one of Business Week's “Stars of Asia” (2001) and Asiaweek's “50 most powerful communicators” (2000)."

Participant in an NDI-CALD workshop.


 * Winner of the 2001 Free Media Pioneer Award
 * Member, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
 * International Advisory Board, Privacy International