Initiative to form AJA launched over coffee in Melaka, Malaysia, in 2002

By Norila Daud,
Chief Editor, Malaysia World News

KUALA LUMPUR: The Asia Journalists Association (AJA) was officially established on November 22, 2004. It will be 20 years old this November.

Its establishment was not easy as it had to go through a long challenging journey of more than two years.

Four thinkers who were also heads of the regional Asian journalist associations were the movers who had triggered the idea of forming AJA.

They include Mr. Lee Sang Kee, the President of Journalists Association of Korea (JAK) and his assistant Mr. Seok-jae Kang, Mr. Ivan Lim, President of Singapore National Union of Journalists and Norila Daud, President of the National Union of Journalists Malaysia (NUJM).

Mr Lee and Mr. Kang had often been invited to the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists (CAJ) General Assemblies and seminars. They were not strangers to the CAJ affiliates and had met them in Singapore when Ivan Lim took the post of the President of CAJ from Thailand and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I took the president post from Ivan after two years on a rotational basis.

Discussions on the AJA formation went going on whenever we met in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and in Seoul, Korea. Mr. Lee and Mr. Kang had also met me in Athens, Greece, when the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) had its General Assembly in May 2004.

In 2002, four of us met in Malaysia at the invitation of the Chief Minister of Melaka, Mohd. Ali Rustam. The invitation was in conjunction with the state’s annual traditional and cultural festivals celebration.

That was the first time NUJM as an affiliate to CAJ had cooperated with the Melaka State Government to invite ASEAN and Asian journalists from India, China, Korea, Japan and Hong Kong to visit the historical city of Melaka.

Melaka had been colonised by the Portuguese from 1511 until 1641 when the Dutch took over. Melaka is about 145 kilometres from Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur.

While in Melaka Mr. Ivan and I had participated in the forum entitled “Developmental Journalism in ASEAN”. The topic was very suitable at that time as the Internal Security Act” (ISA) was still the powerful “tool” for the government to detain journalists, politicians and the people whom they felt and alleged had threatened their “political positions” and national security.

However ISA had been repealed and passed by the Malaysian Parliament in 2012.

The formation of AJA was discussed whenever the four of us met. In Melaka, we met casually in one the journalists’ room while drinking coffee. If I am not mistaken there were more than four of us discussing the AJA formation.

Some of them said Taiwan, Japan and China were also interested in leading the formation of AJA. However the four of us have managed to formalise AJA with Mr. Lee as the hard core mover to realize the dream to represent journalists from the Asian countries.

Before finalising the AJA statute, we exchanged information via e-mails. At that time there were no Facebook or WhatsApp, and sometimes Mr. Lee, Mr. Ivan and Mr. Kang called me on the hand phone for confirmation of certain information.

After the first meeting in Melaka, the discussion on AJA formation continued in Seoul, Korea, where we attended the East Asia Journalists Forum (EAJF) in 2004. The forum was attended by journalists from ASEAN, Asia, IFJ affiliates and United States of America (USA).

During this time, the founding members formulated and finalised the AJA bylaws, and on November 22, 2004, AJA was officially launched and became the official platform for Asian journalists to discuss issues and propose suggestions for journalists to move on in their careers.

With the formation of AJA, Mr. Ivan Lim and I met several times in Seoul on Mr. Lee’s invitation as the President of AJA.

Without AJA, we will not meet at official journalist forums organised by IFJ and CAJ as we were not holding any positions in the associations back in our countries. We are now independent journalists and act as committee members representing AJA.

AJA is an association for all journalists who can become members, but they must be working either for their own company or for others. Unlike other international journalist organisations, only leaders in journalist associations are invited to attend events.