The founder and curator of Asia Undercovered, Nithin Coca is a Asia-focused freelance journalist who covers politics, society, and environment, across the region.
Newsletter
This week: Internet shutdowns in Asia’s two largest democracies, nationalist pro-China trolls, palm oil industry copying bit tobacco tactics, and a forest heroine in India. Internet shutdown in Kashmir and West Papua Seven million people in Kashmir, and a similar number in West Papua are facing severe restrictions on
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This week: Media coverage of Hong Kong, Papua protests, Jade in Myanmar and some royal princes. First, a message from Hong Kong to Western Media Most major US media have speculated non-stop about military interventions. It’s no surprise that I’ve seen quite a bit of criticism of western
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This week: More evidence of a Uyghur genocide, India’s plan for Kashmir, and why fake news is getting worse in the Philippines. Forced sterilization and illegal deportations of Uyghurs The news keeps getting worse for Uyghurs. First, a Uyghur man living in Pakistan arrived in the US after a
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Crisis in Kashmir Earlier this week, the Indian government announced that it would change the constitution, making Kashmir lose its special status and turning it into a union territory. Right now, there’s little to no information at all coming out of the region due to widespread internet and cellular
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Next week, on August 9th, is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples - a day to to raise awareness of the needs of these population groups. Indigenous people globally have struggled for centuries over landrights, forced assimilation, issues with citizenship and more. While several countries now have laws
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Floods in South Asia Massive floods have displaced upwards of 400,000 people in Bangladesh, and thousands more in neighboring countries. This should be a huge story, but besides this Reuters piece, it’s gotten little coverage. This, sadly, is not new. Natural disasters in Asia merit little attention in
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Big news – Asia Undercovered hit 500 subscribers last week! I hope it is just the start. My goal when starting this newsletter was to challenge the English language media’s failure to cover or promote stories about Asia. With US elections “approaching” (it’s actually still a year and a
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When Xinjiang – and China – Changed July 5th, 2009. For Uyghurs, a day that will live on for eternity. That was when riots broke out in Urumqi, leading to a clampdown that, today, has turned into cultural genocide and massive concentration camps. Not coincidentally, it happened a little over a year
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This week: Xinjiang, WeChat, the caste system in India, Facebook propaganda in Taiwan, and Japan’s disappearing heritage farmhouses. Vice did an entire episode on Xinjiang However there was criticism that the piece could have done a better job protecting sources. I agree, but I also think that, for journalists
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This week: stories on how China’s rulers maintain control, why Malaysian politics is getting dirty again, and Afghanistan’s surprising sports revival. China’s resilient dictatorship Despite predictions that the internet, economic growth, or increased exposure to the outside world would force China to democratize, the country remains not
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While historic protests in Hong Kong have captivated the world, several other pressing stories from Asia are not getting enough attention, including the expansion of anti-Muslim repression in China, a potentially historic court case in Vietnam, and Thailand ongoing farce democracy. Undercovered this Week Genocide update: Uyghur culture is being
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The results in India’s historic elections were announced in late May, showing Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party winning an even larger vote than five years ago. The elections as a whole got very little attention in the US media, and the results too were mostly just cited in