Michael Caster is a human rights advocate and researcher specializing in China and Southeast Asia. He is currently the Asia digital program manager with Article 19, where he manages projects on internet freedom and digital rights. In 2016 he co-founded Safeguard Defenders, a regional human rights organization with a focus on China, and with whom he continues to serve as senior advisor. Michael previously worked with Civil Rights Defenders. In 2008, he was a co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group in Beijing, until the organization was crippled in 2016 in a country-wide crackdown on the human rights movement.
As a researcher and consultant, Michael has worked across East and Southeast Asia. He holds degrees in international law and human rights from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. He has pursued research consultancies with the Minority Rights Group, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and others. His analysis and opinion writing has appeared in the Guardian, CNN, Nikkei Asian Review, and elsewhere, and he has provided expert commentary in text, radio and television media including the New York Times, Guardian, BBC, and others. He is the editor of The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from Inside China’s System for Enforced Disappearances.
Follow him on Twitter: @michaelcaster.
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