An activist from Myanmar who was tortured by the military as a student and now runs an NGO probing infrastructure projects is among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, its committee said yesterday.
Also cited for the award, Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel, were two Chinese men, an Indian, a Filipino and a Thai woman.
Ka Hsaw Wa of Myanmar, co-founder of EarthRights International, was recognized for “dauntlessly pursuing non-violent yet effective channels of redress, exposure and education for the defense of human rights, the environment and democracy,” the committee said.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Yu Xiaogang (於曉剛) of China was given the award for raising concerns about dams in his country and advocating social impact assessments in all such mega-infrastructure projects.
Ma Jun (馬軍), also of China and a former journalist, was awarded for publicizing environmental issues in China, including naming more than 10,000 companies violating emission standards.
Indian Deep Joshi, who has management and engineering degrees from the Massachussets Institute of Technology, was cited for decades of development work in rural India and founding a non-profit organization that recruits university graduates and grooms them to do grassroots projects in poor communities.
Antonio Oposa, a Filipino environmental activist and lawyer, was awarded for helping protest abuse of marine eco-systems, including organizing sea patrols to raid boat operators engaged in illegal dynamite fishing.
Krisana Kraisintu of Thailand was recognized for her work in producing generic drugs for HIV/AIDS victims, many times cheaper than the multiple pills from pharmaceutical companies. She has worked both in Thailand and in sub-Saharan Africa.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea in November last year — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, the South Korean National Intelligence Service said yesterday. North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported. Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since then-North Korean deputy ambassador to the
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source