EngageMedia: Getting to Kow Their Work on Digital Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region
The Community Series features stories of the people and projects behind the digital rights community.
EngageMedia advocates for digital rights, promotes open and secure technology, and documents social issues through video in the Asia-Pacific region. We spoke with Meg Soriano, Program Coordinator; Khairil Zhafri, Human Rights Technology and Research Project Lead; and Ashraf Haque, Digital Security Specialist, to learn more about internet freedom and digital rights in the Asia-Pacific region, and their projects, including 2025 Digital Rights Asia-Pacific Assembly, Human Rights Technology Initiative, and DRAPAC VPN Project.
Meg Soriano, EngageMedia’s Program Coordinator
How EngageMedia Started
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EngageMedia is a nonprofit founded in 2005 to develop an open-source film platform focused on social issues in the Asia-Pacific. Meg shares that the organization has evolved to lead and support advocacy on various issues, such as digital rights and open and secure technology as well as convene and collaborate with changemakers across the region.
They currently support the collaboration of changemakers across the region, with a vision of a world where human rights, democracy, and the environment are respected by both businesses and governments.
“The idea started in Indonesia and we thought of gathering and giving space to filmmakers from the region, so they can share their content with other people. Then this expanded into different sectors, including digital rights and security. We also work on environmental justice, immigrant rights, democracy, and other social issues,” shares Ashraf.
The Human Rights Technology Initiative
As part of EngageMedia’s Human Rights Technology Initiative, the first Open Tech Camp brought together activist-technologists from across Asia-Pacific.
Among EngageMedia’s key projects is the Human Rights Technology Initiative, a program designed to enhance digital security for human rights defenders across Asia-Pacific, who operate in some of the world’s most restrictive digital environments.
According to the 2024 Freedom on the Net report, Asia-Pacific nations rank lower than the global average for Internet freedom, with only three out of 15 countries surveyed in the region considered “free.” It notes that China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Pakistan and Thailand are some of the most restrictive countries globally. Meanwhile, internet freedom continues to deteriorate in countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh due to rising authoritarianism, disinformation, expanded surveillance, censorship, and the erosion of democratic institutions. Khairil shares:
“Internet freedom is not the default in our region. Surveillance and censorship are the norm in several countries. If we look at China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, for example, there is a clear community need for secure tools. There is strong demand for privacy-respecting, community-centered technologies, and the Human Rights Technology Initiative aims to support citizens and defend users’ rights in this context.”
To address these challenges, the initiative offers essential training, tools, and community-driven solutions. It also works to ensure that digital security resources are accessible and locally relevant—especially important in a region where adoption among human rights defenders has long been hindered by structural and technological barriers. Currently, they are conducting a baseline study to understand how human rights defenders access, use, and experience digital technology designed to protect them. You can participate in the survey at survey.engagemedia.org/techsurvey2025en.
FREE VPN for Asia-Pacific Human Rights Defenders
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way
Outline VPN is an open-source tool, developed by Jigsaw (a Google subsidiary), that is especially useful in countries with heavy internet censorship. It enables users to access blocked websites and services using a censorship-resistant solution based on the Shadowsocks protocol, which makes VPN traffic appear as regular internet activity.
Through their DRAPAC VPN Project, EngageMedia and other partners maintain private Outline VPN servers, and help screen, onboard and distribute access keys to human rights defenders. This service is critical as repressive governments increasingly target VPN services and circumvention tools to tighten control over information.
The DRAPAC VPN Project ensures that grassroots activists, independent journalists, academic researchers, and other human rights defenders can maintain secure and unrestricted access to the internet. Project partners include Reporters Without Borders, eQualitie, Digital Defenders Partnership, and SAFEnet.
How to Support this Initiative and Asia-Pacific Human Rights Defenders
If your organization is interested in supporting this initiative by hosting an Outline VPN server, visit: drap.ac/vpn/partners/
To contribute to translations of tools and resources, visit: Transifex project space maintained by Localization Lab. They are always looking for volunteers who speak Asia-Pacific languages such as Bengali, Burmese, Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese.
How to Request Access Key and Use their Outline Servers
The DRAPAC VPN Bot lets users request free Outline VPN access keys via Telegram
(in Bengali, English, Indonesian, Malay, and Burmese).
Chat on Telegram with @drapacvpn_bot
More info: drap.ac/vpn/bot
Need Support? write at vpn@engagemedia.org
Other EngageMedia Initiatives
Participants at the DRAPAC24 Assembly, Taipei, Taiwan – August 2024.
Digital Rights Asia-Pacific (DRAPAC) annual assembly brings together stakeholders across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond to address digital authoritarianism, strengthen protections for high-risk communities, and shape rights-based digital governance through cross-sector alliances. The third edition, DRAPAC25, will be held on August 26–27, 2025, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
DRAPAC Webinar Series, hosted throughout the year, features topics ranging from country-specific digital rights threats to the impact of technology on governance, media freedom, and social justice.
Digital Security Community Wiki is a volunteer-run community wiki offering digital security knowledge and tools in various Southeast Asian languages. It includes: circumvention and anonymity tools, communications and messaging, documentation and data management, internet browsing and productivity, and more.
Cinemata is a free and open source video platform that hosts over 6,500 user-contributed films on human rights and environmental films about the Asia-Pacific. It highlights essential yet underheard stories, helping filmmakers make an impact and audiences discover thought-provoking work.
The Future of Digital Rights in Asia-Pacific
EngageMedia’s Program Coordinator, Meg Soriano, shares that their organization is working to contribute towards “improved and unrestricted internet access in the Asia-Pacific region,” where the internet is treated as a public good and all citizens have the means and the right to access an open, free, and secure internet, with an unrestricted flow of information.
“The future of digital rights in Asia-Pacific stands at a crossroads. While challenges like surveillance, censorship, and tech monopolies persist, there’s a powerful collective opportunity to build a digital space that is open, secure, and rights-respecting. We must advance freedom of expression, strengthen privacy protections, enhance cybersecurity and digital safety, regulate big tech, promote ethical AI development, and adopt people-centered policies to ensure the internet serves the public good and empowers all,” Meg adds.
If you would like to support EngageMedia projects, you can become a financial contributor.