As we bid 2019 adieu, thoughts about the year that was

AJA Confrrence in Seoul in March 2019

By Habib Toumi

Manama: Any year is a good year to be a journalist. Especially when you are privileged to have an extensive network of fellow journalist friends from various countries.

We at the Asia Journalists Association (AJA) are among these lucky journalists.

We come from countries that are vastly different in areas and in population.

We have diverse cultures, languages, traditions, religions, sects, races, political systems and social structures.

Yet, for many years without interruption and despite the differences, journalists have been regularly coming together, as our dear friend Sang-ki Lee, the founder of AJA, says “Birds of a feather come together. The birds make up AJA.”

Ivan Lim, the Voice of Wisdom from Singapore, agrees. “Great men (and women) think alike”, he says, but in his familiar lovely wit, he reminds us that “fools seldom differ!”

AJA meetings continued in 2019, bringing in new journalists (I was among the lucky ones) and pushing for more efforts to assert peace in a turbulent world, stability in tension-filled regions, and security in conflict-torn countries.

In March, the 2019 World Journalists Conference brought together about 70 journalists from around 50 countries, some close to the venue of the event, but others requiring participants to fly hours and hours before reaching the splendid airport of Incheon.

The week-long conference was promoted by the Journalists Association of Korea (JAK), which marked the seventh of its kind.  A great credit to the association and to its commitment to bringing journalists from across the globe.

The conference was a great success for discussing several topics related to journalism, addressing thorny issues and agreeing on the significance of peace in the Korean Peninsula and throughout the world.

A visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the border buffer that divides the Korean Peninsula roughly in half highlighted palpably the need for reconciliation and concord.In the second half of 2019, AJA continued to hold local and international meetings with members and with other organizations to consolidate its adherence to excellence in journalism and to interaction with all communities, professionals and NGOs.

AJA members meeting in Seoul

In keeping with its traditions to recognize outstanding talent and honor exceptional achievements, AJA announced in October that it selected Korean Film Director Bong Joon-ho as the 2019 Asian of the Year.

The award was richly deserved. Bong won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and in the year of the Korean film industry’s centennial anniversary, he is considered the greatest Korean film director.

Ceremony to honor Bong

Bong joins a list of awardees who include Indonesian President Joko Widodo (2016), Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma (2017), Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Korean Football Manager Park Hang-seo (2018).The award was presented on November 11 at a glorious ceremony in Seoul that coincided with the eighth anniversary of the first publication of the AsiaN, AJA’s flagship magazine.

Sang-ki Lee honoring Park Hang-seo, the 2018 laureate

In 2019, AsiaN continued to move forward in the highly competitive website magazine world thanks to the contributions of its correspondents, reporters and representatives whose articles and features on a wide variety of topics have helped us appreciate better the increasingly changing nature of the world as well as its hidden beauty and treasures.

For the English version of the magazine that publishes also in Korean and in Arabic under the leadership of highly-capable people, Ivan Lim has, thanks to his engaging style, has offered us great insights into the major political, economic and social issues in Singapore.

Our veteran journalist and accomplished composer Eddy Suprapto kept us well informed about some of the challenges awaiting Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and his team as well as about Indonesia Vision 2019-2024. His Old Shoes for Mother feature highlighted how an inspiring life story motivated great success.

Nassir, through his steady articles, allowed AsiaN readers and surfers to understand all kinds of developments and policy making in Pakistan while our other beloved Nassir helped us comprehend the true Malaysia thanks to his regular comments and analyses on a range of topical issues.

Norila Daud, AJA  Senior Vice President, explained how Islamic tourism gives positive perspectives about Islam in Malaysia as her country s ready to welcome millions of international tourists in the Visit Malaysia Year 2020.

Pooneh and Alireza highlighted Iran’s rich culture and deep-rooted traditions, and we do look forward to more such beautiful features.

Phong Lan shared artfully described the colorful charm of a Sunday market in northernmost Vietnam.

Kuber kept us abreast with the developments of the Nepalese-Chinese relations during the visit of President Xi Jinping and the controversy over the planned Nepal-China Extradition Treaty.

We also drew regularly from Asian national news agencies, such as Yonhap (South Korea), Bernama (Malaysia), Kabar (Kyrgyzstan), Antaranews (Indonesia), News LK (Sri Lanka), Montsame (Mongolia), KazInform (Kazakhstan), Azertac (Azerbaijan), VNA (Vietnam), PNA (Philippines), BNA (Bahrain), SPA (Saudi Arabia), WAM (United Arab Emirates) and KUNA (Kuwait). We are grateful for their reports and pictures. We are now covering Asia, east, west, central and south.

It is thanks to the cooperation of dedicated journalists and to their accurate, fair, and balanced articles that we are moving ahead in accordance with AsiaN motto “Inspiring Asia, Empowering People, Leading Change.”

As we bid 2019 adieu and as we look forward to a brighter future, we are anticipating a year of challenges, but mainly of successes. We have come a long way since AJA was founded and AsiaN launched thanks to the dreams of the founders, the vision of the group leaders and the commitments of the members.

As we look ahead to 2020, we have plans to improve the AsiaN site to make it more attractive, allow comments and interaction with the article writers. We need to work on our social media, mainly Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to ensure a higher number of followers. We want to widen our areas of coverage and reach out to more people and more countries. We want to delve deeper into analyses and post more features.

We want 2020 to be a truly special year. So, do not hesitate to enrich AJA and AsiaN and generously share your ideas, thoughts, suggestions, criticism and critique.

Thank you for a great 2019.

Have a wonderful New Year 2020.