Jegathesan Muniandy Jegathesan

M Jegathesan is a Malaysia-based journalist with almost 30 years of experience providing in-depth Southeast Asian news plus teaching media relations to graduate students. Among the types of stories M Jegathesan covered was the fall of Indonesian strongman President Suharto in 1998 following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
In 2004, M Jegathesan was assigned to cover the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia. He was covered the disaster from the Aceh town of Meulaboh, the tsumani’s ground zero in the province.
Other regional disasters he covered included the impact of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar's Irrawady Delta in 2008. In 2002 and 2005, M Jegathesan was assigned to cover the Bali bombings that killed hundreds of people.
M Jegathesan also covered international summits, including the annual gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
With the ability to provide concise and vivid reporting, M Jegathesan also writes extensively on the environment, conservation and on the indigenous population in Malaysia's Borneo island threatened by logging and dam constructions.
M Jegathesan has extensively covered the rough and tumble of Malaysian politics, including the premiership of Mahathir Mohamad, the Reformasi movement and Anwar Ibrahim’s rise to the pinnacle of political power and Najib Razak’s ignominious fall from grace.
Early in his career in March 1994, M Jegathesan was assigned by the National News Agency (Bernama) for a one-month stint to cover the civil war in Somalia by sailing on the Malaysian Navy ship KD Indera Sakti across the Indian Ocean.

In 1985, M Jegathesan was commissioned as an infantry officer by King Sultan Iskandar after completing three years of training as a platoon commander under the Reserve Officers Training Program at the National University of Malaysia.