‘They’re not music videos’: YouTube human rights news channel Just Asia struggles to make a difference
- Hong Kong student volunteers present weekly video news programme showing oppression and state brutality across Asia
- Just Asia’s producer and cameraman, journalist Amila Sampath, is frustrated by channel’s low viewership but says: if we don’t do something for victims who will?
A Pakistani man shaves his wife’s head when she refuses to dance for his friends in their home. On the Philippine island of Negros, police slay 14 innocent farmers they suspect are communist rebels. A mother and her two children die from suspected smoke inhalation after she was banished to a “menstrual hut” in rural Nepal.
These are just a few of the recent stories covered by Just Asia, a weekly YouTube news programme from the independent, Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission that aims to broadcast news of regional human rights abuses to a global audience.
As founding video producer of Just Asia, Amila Sampath, 30, gathers film clips and news snippets from around the region. His sources include activists, lawyers and NGOs, and the show, uploaded on Fridays, is anchored by university student volunteers.
“There are a lot of TV channels but there is no space for those victims and to talk about human rights. I want to create a platform [for] victims, survivors, lawmakers, journalists, human rights defenders … to … discuss their problems,” Sri Lanka-born Sampath says.
Among other issues Just Asia has covered recently are clashes over clean water in Sri Lanka, the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility to nine in the Philippines, and the political aftermath of Hong Kong’s 2014 “umbrella movement” pro-democracy protests.
Sampath has produced more than 250 episodes of Just Asia, but getting audiences to take an interest in the protection and well-being of fellow human beings has not been easy. He is disappointed the show is not more widely viewed.