Michael Sullivan
Michael Sullivan is NPR's Senior Asia Correspondent. He moved to Hanoi to open NPR's Southeast Asia Bureau in 2003. Before that, he spent six years as NPR's South Asia correspondent based in but seldom seen in New Delhi.
Michael was in Pakistan on 9-11 and spent much of the next two years there and in Afghanistan covering the run up to and the aftermath of the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda. Michael has also reported extensively on terrorism in Southeast Asia, including both Bali bombings. He also covered the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Michael was the first NPR reporter on the ground in both Thailand and the Indonesian province of Aceh following the devastating December 2004 tsunami. He has returned to Aceh more than half a dozen times since to document the recovery and reconstruction effort. As a reporter in NPR's London bureau in the early 1990s he covered the fall of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Before moving to New Delhi, Michael was senior producer on NPR's foreign desk. He has worked in more than 60 countries on five continents, covering conflicts in Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Chechnya, and the Middle East. Prior to joining the foreign desk, Michael spent several years as producer and acting executive producer of NPR's All Things Considered.
As a reporter, Michael is the recipient of several Overseas Press Club Awards and Citations for Excellence for stories from Haiti, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. He was also part of the NPR team that won an Alfred I DuPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan. In 2004 he was honored by the South Asia Journalists Association (SAJA) with a Special Recognition Award for his 'outstanding work' from 1998-2003 as NPR's South Asia correspondent.
As a producer and editor, Michael has been honored by the Overseas Press Club for work from Bosnia and Haiti; a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a story about life in Sarajevo during wartime; and a World Hunger Award for stories from Eritrea.
Michael's wife, Martha Ann Overland, is Southeast Asia correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and also writes commentaries on living abroad for NPR. They have two children.
Michael is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He's been at NPR since 1985.
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The visit was aimed at showing the Biden administration's commitment to a region which was largely ignored by ex-President Trump. It's also aimed at countering China's growing influence in the region.
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U.S. vaccine diplomacy is in full swing, especially in Southeast Asia. This distribution of millions of shots is an effort aimed in part at helping regain influence across several countries.
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Myanmar is reeling under a new wave of COVID-19 infections. The health care system has all but collapsed as badly needed doctors are hunted by the military for their opposition to the Feb. 1 coup.
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Indonesia, the world's fourth most populated nation, is overwhelmed by the pandemic. Critics of the government say it failed to take the virus seriously and kept the country open while it spread.
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Thailand posts the highest deaths to date. Indonesia is also posting daily records. Vietnam is locking down Ho Chi Minh City for two weeks. And Cambodia is quietly posting its biggest numbers yet.
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Indonesia's president announced new measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 in his country. The new restrictions only apply to parts of the main island Java and the resort island of Bali.
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Thailand plans to reopen the resort island of Phuket to vaccinated foreign tourists July 1. It's a bid to jump start an economy and a tourist industry battered by the pandemic. Will foreigners come?
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Aung San Suu Kyi, the former de facto head of state, goes on trial in Myanmar on corruption charges. She was deposed earlier this year in a coup by Myanmar's military.
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Myanmar's new military rulers continue squashing dissent with poets and other activists firmly in their sights. Part of a decades long strategy of "state terror and torture" against their citizens.
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"They shoot in the head, but they don't know the revolution is in the heart," Khet Thi wrote. He died in police custody. In opposing the coup, "I have decided to sacrifice my life," he told a friend.
