User:Sebfarcis/Sébastien Farcis

Sébastien Farcis, born in 1980 in Reims, is a French journalist.

He has been a correspondent for Radio France Internationale and other Francophone media in Asia since 2006. He was a correspondent in the Philippines for five years and is the correspondent for RFI, Radio France and Libération in India and South Asia, based in New Delhi, since 2011.

He is co-author of a documentary on Narendra Modi, entitled "Le Monde selon Modi" ( "The World According to Modi"), broadcast on Arte and other global channels.

Education

He grew up in Madrid, Spain, where he passed his baccalaureate at the Lycée français de Madrid.

He then graduated from the Institute of Political Studies, "Sciences Po" in Aix-en-Provence and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme, in Lille.

Career

He began his career as a journalist as a correspondent for French-speaking media in the Philippines, where he moved to in 2006 and worked mainly for French-speaking radio stations (RFI, Radio France, Radio Suisse Romande), as well as for magazines such as Paris Match and Marie Claire.

During this period, he carried out an investigation into the Death Squads of Davao, a city on the southern island of Mindanao led by Rodrigo Duterte, who would later become President of the Philippines. In this city, this mayor applied a method of summary executions of petty criminals and drug traffickers, which he will replicate at the national level in a controversial way. In his documentary, he does an exclusive interview with Rodrigo Duterte, who candidly describes his "cowboy" method of cracking down on crime.

He also does an exclusive interview with Benigno Aquino III on the eve of his election as President of the Philippines, and follows the return of the Marcos clan to the political sphere.

He thus broadcasts interviews with Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the latter while he is still a senator and several years before he is elected president of the Philippines, in 2022.

Sébastien Farcis also documents the path of discrimination suffered by transgender and transsexual people in the Philippines, in a major report published in Paris Match, illustrated with photographs by Romain Rivierre. This work will give rise to a multimedia exhibition shown throughout the Philippines, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with the aim of raising awareness of these forms of discrimination.

Sébastien Farcis moved to India in 2011, where he became correspondent for RFI, Radio France and Liberation for South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), first from Bombay, then New Delhi from 2014.

He then follows the rise of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) to power, elected for the first time in the 2014 legislative elections. He is the co-author, with Sophie Lepault, of a TV documentary of 75 minutes on Narendra Modi, called "Le Monde selon Modi", ("The World According to Modi"). It is broadcast in France and Germany on Arte, and then throughout the world (Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, etc.).

He follows the various crises that agitated India during this period, such as the revolt of young people after the terrible gangrape in New Delhi in December 2012, the demonstrations against the reform of access to citizenship, perceived as Islamophobic, as well as the demonstration of farmers against the reform of the agricultural market and their incredible blocking of part of the access to the capital.

He also covers the most important events that shook the region: the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, the humanitarian crisis that hit Bangladesh with the arrival of 750,000 Rohingyas in this poor country, as well as the 2022 revolution in Sri Lanka against the Rajapakse clan, whose disastrous management plunged the country into the worst economic crisis in the country's history.

Awards and honours

He is twice a recipient of the European Journalism Center (EJC) grant, through its grant program dedicated to global health, for an investigation into tuberculosis in India (2019), and for the Indian production of vaccines against COVID-19 (2020).

In 2021, he is also awarded a Pulitzer scholarship, for an investigation into the flaws in India's compensatory reforestation program, called Campa.

Elected positions

He has been elected to the Board of Directors of France Médias Monde, representing employees, since 2018, and was Secretary of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia between 2021 and 2023.