Steven Gan (simplified Chinese: 颜重庆; traditional Chinese: 顏重慶; pinyin: Yán Chóngqìng; Jyutping: Ngaan4 Cung4 Hing3; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Gân Tiông-khìng; born 1962) is a Malaysian journalist known for co-founding and editing the political news website Malaysiakini (English: "Malaysia Today"), Malaysia's "first and only" independent news source.
[3] At the age of 14, Gan ran away from home, living on the streets of Kuala Lumpur before he was coaxed back into his studies by his uncle.
[5] In 1995, he led a team of reporters that discovered that 59 inmates, primarily Bangladeshis, had died in the Semenyih immigration detention camp of the preventable diseases typhoid and beriberi.
[6] Tenaganita publicised the reporters' findings, and its director, Irene Fernandez, was subsequently threatened with imprisonment for "publishing false news".
[5] Fernandez's trials and appeals from the case would last thirteen years, ending in her 2008 acquittal by the Kuala Lumpur Criminal High Court.
Seeing a loophole, Gan and colleague Premesh Chandran decided to found an online news resource that would be free of the controls placed on print media.
For its first story, Malaysiakini posted a report on 20 November criticising the practices of Sin Chew Daily, Malaysia's largest-circulation Chinese-language newspaper.
Sin Chew Daily had doctored a photograph of Malaysia's ruling party to remove Anwar Ibrahim, who had recently been imprisoned for corruption.
According to BBC News, the Malaysiakini report led to "worldwide infamy" for Sin Chew Daily, and the newspaper later issued a public apology.
[6] The website suffered further cyber-attacks in April and July 2011, coinciding with an election in Sarawak and the pro-electoral reform Bersih 2.0 rally; again Gan alleged that the government was responsible.
[16] The raid followed a call by the youth wing of the right-wing political party UMNO to investigate the site for sedition after it published a letter criticising the government's pro-Malay quotas in hiring and scholarships.