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By Madelaine Miraflor, Special To The Manila
Times
The 2009 Ramon Magsaysay awardees are to get recognition and receive
the title “Asia’s Heroes: Science in the Service of Humanity”
in ceremonies today at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)
in Pasay City.
Among the awardees is Filipino Antonio Oposa Jr.
He will be joined by five others: Krisana Kraisintu of Thailand,
Deep Joshi of India, Yu Xiaogang of China, Ma Jun also of China and
Ka Hsaw Wa of Myanmar.
As part of the ceremonies for the Ramon
Magsaysay Awards, which is said to be Asia’s answer to the Nobel
Prize, this year’s batch of winners are expected to lay a wreath
at the tomb of the late President Ramon Magsaysay at the North
Cemetery in Manila.
As is also tradition, the winners will conduct a
series of lectures in Metro Manila from August 27 to September 2 to
discuss the work and advocacies that earned them their awards.
Oposa, a lawyer and an environmental activist,
has been an environmental policy consultant to local governments and
non-government organizations (NGOs) since 1990.
According to the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation,
Oposa remains convinced that the situation in the Philippine marine
ecosystem could be changed and improved for the sake of future
generations. (See related front-page story)
The foundation said that Oposa has taken part in
path-breaking and passionate crusades to engage Filipinos in acts of
enlightened citizenship that maximize the power of the law to
protect and nurture the environment.
Other winners
Krisana Kraisintu is a scientist who devoted her
life to fighting the effects of HIV/AIDS, which has killed millions
of people worldwide for nearly three decades, according to the
foundation. Today, some 38 million people across the globe are
living with the silent scourge of HIV/AIDS.
She is recognized by the foundation for her
determination and effort to place pharmaceutical rigor at the
service of patients, through her untiring and fearless dedication to
producing much-needed generic drugs in Thailand and elsewhere in the
world.
Deep Joshi, a part-time adviser to Professional
Assistance for Development Action in India (PRADAN), is an engineer
and a management professional. He and some colleagues formed PRADAN,
a non-profit organization that recruits university-educated youth
and aims to professionalize development work.
“Civil society needs to have both head and
heart,” Joshi said in a statement released by the Ramon Magsaysay
Foundation. “If all you have is bleeding hearts, it wouldn’t
work. If you only have heads, then you are going to dictate
solutions which do not touch the human chords.”
The foundation chose Joshi because of his vision
and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in
India.
Yu Xiaogang, one of the two awardees from China,
is the founder of the Green Watershed, a non-profit organization
that helps communities organize a multisectoral watershed-management
committee and mobilizes village associations for irrigation, fishery
and similar activities. Yu also received the Goldman Environmental
Prize in the US in 2006.
The foundation said that it was recognizing Yu
for fusing the knowledge and tools of social science with a deep
sense of social justice.
His compatriot and fellow awardee, Ma Jun, is
the founder and director of the Institute of Public and
Environmental Affairs (IPEA) in Beijing. Ma uses creative and
constructive ways to address the pollution crisis in China,
according to the foundation.
Ma was chosen by the foundation for harnessing
technology and the power of information to address China’s water
crisis.
The awardee from Myanmar, Ka Hsaw Wa, is being
recognized for speaking out on human-rights abuses in his country,
where pro-democracy Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept under house
arrest.
Ka Hsaw Wa is the founder of Earth Rights
International.
The foundation said it recognizes his dauntless
pursuit of nonviolent means to redress, expose and educate people
about human rights, environment issues and democracy in Myanmar.
The awards
The Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation was
organized in Manila in May 1957 with the mission of “honoring
greatness of spirit in selfless service to the peoples of Asia.”
The Ramon Magsaysay Awards was created in 1957,
the year President
Ramon Magsaysay was killed in a plane crash.
After his death, the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
established the awards to honor his memory and perpetuate his
example of integrity in public service and pragmatic idealism within
a democratic society.
(Miss Miraflor is a student of The Manila
Times College. )
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