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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This week's summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations provides the latest opportunity for the Biden administration to push for isolating Russia internationally over the war in Ukraine.
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The verdict was not unexpected. She is already serving a six-year term after being sentenced last year by a military-run court for violating COVID restrictions and illegally importing walkie-talkies.
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The Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach helped put Maya Bay on the "must see" list of every visitor to Thailand. But that proved too much for its delicate ecosystem. The pandemic helped change that. -
It's been a year since a coup threw Myanmar into chaos amid war crimes accusations against the military. Neither the military nor an increasingly organized resistance are showing signs of compromise.
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The Khmer Rouge killed as many as 2 million Cambodians in the 70s. Decades later, a tribunal was set up to help find justice. 15 years later, it's ending having found just three people guilty.
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Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk who was known worldwide as a pioneer of mindfulness, has died at the age of 95.
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Cambodia's Hun Sen is in Myanmar, the first foreign leader to go there since last year's coup. Some hope the much criticized trip can persuade the junta to end the violence there.
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The attack in the east of the country left at least 35 people dead — as resistance to the military's Feb. 1 coup grows. The military has not responded directly to the allegations about the massacre.
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Four prominent Vietnamese dissidents have been given harsh prison terms for speaking out against the government. Activists say it's part of an escalating crackdown on dissent.
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Plans for a new water diversion project in Thailand are alarming environmentalists. And a Chinese state-owned firm offered to finance it, raising flags with those who fear China's growing influence.
