Myanmar has one of the most challenging environments for the practice of journalism in Asia.  With its history of military rule and weak civic institutions, the effort to build a strong, independent, and socially responsible press has to contend with draconian laws, rabid intolerance, repression and persecution.  It is an environment that calls for journalists of uncommon will, professional independence, and a strong sense of justice.

Such a journalist is forty-one-year-old KO SWE WIN.  Born to a poor family in Yangon, he grew up in politically turbulent times and fell victim to state repression early on.  In 1998, he was a university student when he was arrested with sixty-seven others for participating in a student demonstration and distributing propaganda materials against the ruling military junta.  Sentenced to twenty-one years in jail, he was tortured and starved but would turn prison into a learning experience.  He studied English, deepened his Buddhist faith, and did a lot of meditation.  Released after seven years in prison, he studied journalism, doing an online undergraduate program and with a scholarship, finished a master’s degree in journalism at Hong Kong University in 2009.   He worked for a magazine in Thailand, and then, intent on being “where the action was,” returned to Yangon in 2012.

In Yangon, he started as a stringer for Al Jazeera and New York Times and even set up a short-lived, self-financed internet news service. The first important opportunity came when Myanmar Now was launched in 2015, with seed financing from the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Myanmar Now is an independent online news service focused on long-form investigative reports in both Burmese and English, available for syndication.  With SWE WIN as editor-in-chief since 2016, the news service has built a strong reputation for well-researched, in-depth articles on critically selected, underreported human rights and social justice issues.

SWE WIN has continued to face daunting challenges. In 2017, he criticized a powerful, ultranationalist Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, for purveying “hate speech” and publicly commending the killer of a Muslim human rights activist.  Wirathu, SWE WIN wrote, had desecrated Buddhism and should be punished for endorsing assassination and fomenting hate.  SWE WIN was sued for defamation, physically assaulted by Wirathu’s supporters, and briefly jailed on the trumped-up charge that he tried to leave the country while on bail.  Illustrating how the law can be bent by the powerful, the trial was held in a location that required SWE WIN to take a 780-mile road trip to and from the trial, which was purposely dragged out such that SWE WIN had to do a total of seventy-one trips at great personal inconvenience and cost.  A case of blatant harassment, the judge finally dropped the case on July 2, 2019 for the plaintiff’s protracted non-appearance at court hearings.

SWE WIN and Myanmar Now draw strength from the fact that they are making a difference.  With a current readership of 350,000, the news service is highly regarded for the quality, balance, and depth of its reporting on high-impact issues, including land grabbing, child labor, and abuse of domestic workers.  It exposed anomalies in the Myanmar Human Rights Commission; in a political indoctrination program ran by the army for civil servants; in the secret operation of some fifty prison labor camps where prisoners are made to work in quarries and mines; and in the activities of the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, a movement of xenophobic, anti-Muslim extremists.  SWE WIN is encouraged that public awareness has been raised and government has responded positively in a number of cases, punishing officials or changing policies.

A growing problem in Myanmar and the world, SWE WIN says, is “intolerance and hostility towards different races and nationalities being exploited as a political weapon.”  “Only the promotion of human rights,” he says, “can help us contain this deplorable trend.”

In electing KO SWE WIN to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his undaunted commitment to practice independent, ethical, and socially engaged journalism in Myanmar; his incorruptible sense of justice and unflinching pursuit of the truth in crucial but underreported issues; and his resolute insistence that it is in the quality and force of media’s truth-telling that we can convincingly protect human rights in the world.

First, I would like to thank Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for giving me this prestigious award in Asia.

But I feel deeply humbled by the fact that there are so many out there in our country and various parts of the world ”more selfless and more honest than I am but who have been never recognized for the services they render to their respective societies.

I am the seventh person from Myanmar ”and the second journalist ”to receive this award. The first Myanmar journalist and one of the earliest recipients of this award is Mr. Edward Michael Law-Yone, who founded the Nation newspaper in 1948. That was one of the most influential newspapers in Southeast Asia.

After the first military coup in 1962, Michael Law-Yone was jailed for five years and later forced to leave the country. Professional journalism had been lost in our country since then. The state of oppression, which forced Mr. Law-Yone to leave his beloved country, has relaxed to some extent following some democratic changes initiated since 2011.

According to the current constitution, however, the military remains the most dominant force, which controls key ministries and holds one quarter of seats in the legislature.

The predominance of the military’s role, combined with the continued armed clashes in a number of ethnic minorities and the rise of nationalism, is the major challenge facing the independent media in Myanmar.  This situation constantly instills a sense of threat into civil life and the news media circle.

But having passed through various political and social turbulences over the past decades, we have developed a great resilience and a tremendous amount of patience for the problems in our country. None of the people I know in Myanmar expect change to happen overnight, but we have a firm belief that we are not on the right path towards democracy and liberty as long as the supremacy of civilian rule has not come into fruition.

In this context, journalism plays a crucial role ”the kind of journalism that seeks the truth, that protects the fundamental rights of human beings, that is not colored by political and religious dogmas and, above all, that is driven not by animosities against anyone or any entity but by a great compassion for the most unfortunate communities and individuals in a society.

Even though an independent press or press freedom is mostly a by-product of a democratic political system, we are confident that the press can play a vibrant causal role for the growth of democracy and liberty in Myanmar and many other countries in Asia.

In a country known for its rich musical culture and blessed with a surfeit of musical talent, to stand out as singular and indispensable is truly outstanding.  In the Philippines today such a musical leader is RAYMUNDO “RYAN” PUJANTE CAYABYAB.

Born in Manila, one of four siblings, RYAN’s father was a government employee, his mother an opera singer and music teacher. Though the family’s circumstances were modest, theirs was a home filled with music, particularly since his mother took in music students as boarders.  Everyone in the house seemed to be either singing or playing an instrument, and RYAN grew up listening to classical music, opera arias, and traditional native songs.  Heeding his mother’s admonitions to shun the musician’s financially unrewarding career, RYAN took up a business management course, but to help pay for his university studies he took on side jobs as pianist or accompanist for musical artists. The parents of one such artist were so impressed with his talent that they gave RYAN a full scholarship to pursue a degree in music instead.  From this point on, music would be his life-work.

Versatile, a consummate professional, and universally liked, RYAN CAYABYAB is virtually omnipresent in the Philippine music industry today.  For over four decades, his contributions as a composer, arranger, music director, conductor, performer, and educator have been huge.  RYAN started to write music in the late 1970s, making his mark when his signature song “Kay Ganda ng Ating Musika” (How Beautiful is Our Music) won the grand prize in the first Metro Manila Popular Music Festival (Metropop) in 1978 and in an international song festival in South Korea in the same year.  He went on to win in other competitions and performed widely in the Philippines and abroad.  As head and artistic director of the San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts, he acted as conductor, arranger, and composer of its award-winning Philharmonic Orchestra and Master Chorale.  Subsequently, he would be involved in training singers and music groups that have won significant national and international recognition.

At home in diverse genres and media—choral and orchestral works, musical theater, opera and ballet, television programs, film scores, commercial recordings of popular music—RYAN has influenced the shaping of Philippine music culture.  An instance is the role he has played in the Original Pilipino Music (OPM) movement to promote a culturally distinct, contemporary Filipino popular music.  The movement arose in the 1970s with the Metropop, continuing to this day with Philippine Pop Music Festival (Philpop).  RYAN has played a leading role in these and other festivals, which have been important in inspiring and promoting thousands of singers and songwriters in the country.

RYAN is driven by a passion to mentor, educate, and contribute to the flourishing of Filipino musical talent.  He has served in the music faculty of the University of the Philippines, runs a music studio with his wife, and has conducted free workshops for thousands of students all across the country. He is a moving force in the Philpop Musicfest Foundation and the Elements Music Camp, major initiatives dedicated to music training, promoting Filipino music abroad, and fostering Filipino cultural identity through music. Honored in 2018 as Philippine National Artist for Music, he was cited for his music that “extols the exuberance of life and human happiness, thus capturing the very essence of our Filipino soul.”

An inspiration and guiding light to many, RYAN says, “The next generation should be better than us for our country to move forward.  For this to happen we must teach them everything we know at every possible instance.  I like teaching, I like sharing what I know, and I like playing music.  When I’m doing all these, I’m very happy.”

In electing RAYMUNDO PUJANTE CAYABYAB to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his compositions and performances that have defined and inspired Filipino popular music across generations; his indomitable, undeterred confidence to selflessly seek, mentor and promote young Filipino musical genius for the global stage; and his showing us all that music can indeed instill pride and joy, and unify people across the many barriers that divide them.

The first song I ever wrote was based on a poem I found in the notebook of a school mate. I was twelve years old and a freshman in high school.  I had no idea that this was the start of a creative music writing career. And even if my mother, an opera singer, dissuaded all her children to take up a career in music, it was here that I found my calling. Songwriters are chroniclers who write about their happiness, their sorrows, their surroundings, their country, their aspirations and anxieties. They mirror everything that happens around them, including socio-political changes in society, and write personal stories in the context of their milieu, in a language that transcends time and barriers.

When I was starting out as a teacher at the U.P. College of Music in Diliman, I realized immediately that this was what I would like to do: spend my life teaching music. Teaching all I know, to young musicians. My wife and I even started to operate a small music school, teaching non-degree courses in music performance and creative music writing just to feed a simple desire. A professional musician once asked me, “Aren’t you afraid that by teaching everything you know you are actually divulging trade secrets?”  Because of this remark it became even clearer to me why I wanted to teach. There really are no trade secrets; but even if there were, I would divulge them anyway.

Teaching can transform lives. I want everyone I teach to discover their maximum potential. I also want them to be better than me. And because I think this was the basic track that I wanted to take, I was able to influence many of my younger colleagues in the music industry to adopt the same vision: to enable the new generation of songwriters to be better than our generation, so that our music community can to move forward, and thus bring the entire creative music industry to new heights, and hopefully help the country to move forward by becoming leaders and songwriters of new music for the world to hear.

Another very compelling vision I share with many of my colleagues is this goal to make the Filipino public aware that our original music is not only a form of entertainment but a living tradition. It is the binding ‘glue’ that forms, strengthens and positively moves the Filipino community, thus rendering it vital and essential to keep on making, promoting and supporting Filipino-made music.  Moreover, it contributes to the vibrant music movement happening in the entire Asian region affecting the lives of its people.

Thank you for this honor bestowed upon me. Thank you to the board of trustees. I share this award with all my colleagues in the music industry who tirelessly give their time to help accomplish our goal of discovering and training future generations of creative songwriters; and to writing new works to contribute to the music literature of our country and of the world.

The world’s largest democracy, India has seen the space for an independent and responsible Indian press shrink over the past years.  The factors behind this are many: a changing media landscape because of new information technologies, the increased marketization of news and opinions, growing government control, and, most worrisome, the rise of popular authoritarianism and religious, ethnic, and nationalist fundamentalisms with their consequent divisiveness, intolerance, and susceptibilities to violence.

An important voice against these threats is television journalist RAVISH KUMAR. Raised in Jitwarpur village in Hindi-speaking Bihar, northeast India, RAVISH pursued his early interest in history and public affairs through postgraduate studies in history from Delhi University. In 1996, he joined New Delhi Television Network (NDTV), one of India’s leading TV networks and worked his way up from being a field reporter. After NDTV launched its 24-hour Hindi-language news channel—NDTV India—targeting the country’s 422 million native speakers of Hindi, he was given his own daily show, “Prime Time.”  Today, as NDTV India’s managing editor, RAVISH is one of India’s most influential TV journalists.

His more important distinction, however, comes from the kind of journalism he represents.  In a media environment threatened by an interventionist state, toxic with jingoist partisans, trolls and purveyors of “fake news,” and where the competition for market ratings has put the premium on “media personalities,” “tabloidization,” and audience-pandering sensationalism, RAVISH has been most vocal on insisting that the professional values of sober, balanced, fact-based reporting be upheld in practice.  His “Prime Time” program on NDTV India takes up current social issues; does serious background research; and presents issues in well-rounded discussions that can run up to twenty or more episodes.  The program deals with real-life, under-reported problems of ordinary people — from the lives of manual scavengers and rickshaw-pullers to the plight of government employees and displaced farmers, to underfunded state schools and the inefficient railway system.  RAVISH interacts easily with the poor, travels extensively, and uses social media to stay in touch with his audience, generating from them the stories for his program.  Striving for a people-based journalism, he calls his newsroom “the people’s newsroom.”

RAVISH is not above engaging in some theatrics himself if he feels it effective, as in an innovative show he did in 2016 to dramatize how debased the discourse had become on TV news programs.  The show opens with RAVISH coming on screen to talk to the viewers about how TV news programs had descended into a “dark world” of angry, strident voices.  The screen then goes dark and, for the next hour, there is nothing but a cacophonous audio of sound bites from actual TV programs, venomous threats, hysterical rants, the sounds of a mob baying for the blood of enemies. For RAVISH, it is always about the message, dispassionately delivered.

As an anchor, RAVISH is sober, incisive, and well-informed.  He does not dominate his guests but affords them the chance to express themselves.  He does not balk, however, at calling the highest officials to account or criticizing media and the state of public discourse in the country; for this reason, he has been harassed and threatened by rabid partisans of one kind or another. Through all the perils and aggravations, RAVISH has remained consistent in his effort to preserve and widen the space for a critical, socially responsible media.  Keeping faith with a journalism that puts service to the people at its center, RAVISH sums up what he believes a journalist is in the most basic terms: “If you have become the voice of the people, you are a journalist.”

In electing RAVISH KUMAR to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity, and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfills its noblest aims to advance democracy.

My world has changed since the announcement of the Ramon Magsaysay Award. Your hospitality has been overwhelming since I landed in Manila; the warmth and affection I have received from the foundation is no less than the honor conferred upon me. You invited me as a guest and made me feel at home; now I feel like a part of your family. Usually award ceremonies are brief affairs but this is different. It has been a humbling experience and makes me feel more responsible than before.

Inequality is mostly measured in terms of health and economy, but the time has come for us to take cognizance of knowledge inequality as well. When resources for quality knowledge have become confined to a few cities, we cannot even begin to imagine what are the repercussions of this inequality in smaller towns and villages. Clearly, the source of knowledge for a vast multitude is the propaganda machine of WhatsApp university. One cannot entirely blame today’s youth since they have been denied quality education and information. It becomes all the more important to evaluate the crisis of the media in this context. If media too begins to function like the WhatsApp university with fake news and fake knowledge, what then would be the consequences for society?  It is a good sign that India’s citizens have begun to understand this. That is why the congratulatory messages that I am receiving are also replete with worries on how the media has turned rogue.

Therefore, while I am happy for myself today I am also filled with sadness looking at the state of the profession I represent.

Indian media is in a state of crisis and this crisis is not accidental or random but systemic and structural. Being a journalist has become a solitary endeavor as uncompromising journalists find themselves being forced out of their jobs by news organizations. Nevertheless, it is heartening to see that there are still some who continue to put their lives and careers at risk to practice honest and meaningful journalism. Some women journalists are speaking out and managing to survive on freelance earning. With the internet still shut down in Kashmir, most major news channels went along with government’s stand. Yet, there are some who have dared to report from within that shutdown and face the wrath of the army of trolls.  While institutional journalism is facing a crisis, individual journalists are struggling to survive and question authority.

Can we restore the sanctity of the news? I do hope audiences will once again realize the value of truthfulness in reporting, and the diversity of voices and opinions.  Because a democracy can thrive only as long as its news is truthful. I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award; I accept it on behalf of all those readers and viewers who continue to live in areas of knowledge inequality but have a thirst for good and truthful information and knowledge. Many young journalists realize this challenge. I am confident that in times to come, they will be able to restore the meaning of true journalism. It is possible that they may lose the battle, but sometimes resistance is not a matter of choice. Not all battles are fought for victory—some are fought simply to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield. I accept this award on behalf of all such journalists.

A predominantly Muslim region in a staunchly Buddhist country, southern Thailand has struggled with religious and ethnic conflict since a separatist insurgency rocked the region in 1948.  Insurgency and militarization have exacted a heavy toll: it is reported that of the more than 6,000 people killed in the conflict since 2004, some ninety percent of these were civilians. These deaths have included the unsolved killings of more than thirty civil society and human rights activists.  One of the more sensational of these killings was the “enforced disappearance” in 2004 of noted human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit, who was abducted in Bangkok the day after he had publicly accused the military of torturing detainees in southern Thailand.

Somchai’s enforced disappearance and subsequent death was a tragic blow to the cause of human rights in the country, and a devastating personal nightmare for his family.  But it would also be the beginning of a remarkable journey for Somchai’s widow, ANGKHANA NEELAPAIJIT, herself a Muslim Thai of humble origins. When her husband “disappeared” ANGKHANA was a housewife looking after their five young children and a small business. Thrust into a dangerous and public controversy, she valiantly worked to bring the police officers involved to trial, but due to a flawed justice system they were acquitted.  Despite the death threats she received, ANGKHANA continued to seek justice for her husband and other human rights victims.  She applied herself to learning the laws, filing legal appeals, and navigating the Thai legal system.  She bonded with other victims, and worked with civil society groups in and outside Thailand.

In 2009, with the help of non-government organizations and her own family, ANGKHANA founded Justice for Peace Foundation (JPF), a network of human rights and peace advocates that has done important work in documenting the human rights situation in southern Thailand, thus raising public awareness and putting pressure on government to act on human rights cases; providing legal assistance to victims; and training women on human rights and the peace process.  In a vital initiative, JPF and other groups pushed for laws that will criminalize torture and enforced disappearances (current Thai law recognizes murder only if the body could be found). Their steadfast lobbying succeeded in getting the Thai government to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 2007, and the Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2012—already major victories even though the implementing rules have yet to be issued.

In 2015, ANGKHANA was named commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, the only commission member with grassroots human rights experience.  Despite the skepticism of government critics, ANGKHANA has taken her appointment seriously, firmly committed to taking the peaceful, legal approach to fighting human rights abuses and to doing what she can in “pushing the limits.”  Quietly non-confrontational, she does not waver in speaking her mind against injustice. As commissioner, she has successfully interceded with the authorities for detainees to have access to lawyers and their families, and for victims to get financial compensation.  She firmly took action on cases of arbitrary arrest and detention and the exercise of freedom of expression and assembly.  She has widened her advocacy to address problems like forced child marriages, trafficking of women, and the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.  ANGKHANA’s term as commissioner ended in July 2019, but there is no doubt she will remain involved in human rights advocacy.  This is for her a deeply personal advocacy.

People have marveled at the transformation of this self-effacing housewife into a leading human rights defender.  But ANGKHANA herself is not surprised.  In her soft-spoken and measured tone she asserts: “Most women experience conflict and violence in a different way than men.  They also develop unique skills for resisting, addressing and preventing conflict.  The work on justice and peace cannot afford to neglect the constructive contributions of women.”

In electing ANGKHANA NEELAPAIJIT to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her unwavering courage in seeking justice for her husband and many other victims of violence and conflict in southern Thailand; her systematic, unflagging work to reform a flawed and unfair legal system, and the shining she is proof that the humblest ordinary person can achieve national impact in deterring human rights abuses.

Today is one of the biggest days of my life. I am truly humbled and proud to stand before such honorable guests to accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award. I would like to express my sincerest appreciation and thanks to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this honor.

For me, the honor I receive today is not a symbol of victory, or the end of my and other survivors’ struggles for rights and justice. It represents a recognition of the continuing struggle for human rights, justice, freedom, democracy and the rule of law of all survivors of human rights abuses in my country and in our region. Also, it means that the voice of victims should be heard.

As a survivor of a human rights violation and a woman human rights defender, I realize that rights, dignity and human values are very important to all human beings. The continuation of the culture of impunity, militarization, failure of the justice system and the social acceptance of those violations are crucial contexts that have kept many victims live in suffering and fear.

While leading a civil society organization, I had the opportunity to work with many vulnerable groups, especially the vulnerable of the vulnerable such as victims of human rights violations in Southern Thailand, most of whom are women, refugees and asylum seekers or grievous women who are victims of gender-based violence. As a former human rights commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, I had the opportunity to work mostly on civil and political rights and women’s rights. I found that many human rights challenges faced by Thailand and other Asian countries—such as violent extremism, poverty, refugee crisis, absence or lack of freedom of expression—are only the tip of the iceberg.

Colleagues, history tells us again and again of the impact that ordinary heroes bring. Extraordinary in their courage, determination and commitment they serve as evidence that every one of us can make a difference to stand for what is right and just. Each and every one of us has a choice to work to promote the upside rather than the downside of humanity. We all have a sense of responsibility towards each other to respect our diversities while protecting our equality. All of us have a hero inside us that is able to recognize the beauty in all of humanity.

Again, I would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation for this prestigious award. Thank you, too, to my colleagues and friends who have always supported me in my work as a WHRDs and a human rights commissioner. Last but not least, special thanks to my family, my father and my children who always stand by me and trust in everything I do.

My honor today as Magsaysay awardee has shown the story of an ordinary woman’s struggle for justice, democracy and the rule of law and—this is a big change for women, for families and for the nation.

The five-year Cambodian genocide of 1975-79, that caused the death of at least two million Cambodians, is one of the most horrific episodes in the long, dark history of crimes against humanity. It is imperative to the cause of justice that this horror is not forgotten. YOUK CHHANG, one of its survivors, has devoted his life to the monumental task of documenting and memorializing the genocide to serve the aims of judicial redress, national reconciliation, and collective healing. More importantly, his work assures that the past is truthfully preserved for present and future generations so that it will not be distorted or ever repeated.

Born in Phnom Penh, YOUK was fourteen years old when his family was forced out of their home by Khmer Rouge operatives to work like slaves in a rural commune. He saw his family reduced to extreme privation; was himself tortured and detained; even worse, YOUK suffered the trauma of the death of his father, five of his siblings, and nearly sixty of his relatives. Able to escape across the Thai border to freedom at the age of seventeen, he found his way as a refugee to the United States. Years later, he would earn a graduate degree in political science and chose to return to Cambodia when civic order had been restored, enrolling in the human rights and democracy training programs of the International Republican Institute and the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

YOUK found his life-long mission in 1995, when the Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Project engaged him to head its Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), charged with investigating and documenting Khmer Rouge atrocities. Two years later, DC-Cam became an independent institute, directed and operated entirely by Cambodians. As its executive director from 1995 to the present, YOUK expanded DC-Cam’s work beyond documentation in aid of the Khmer Rouge War Crimes Trials that began in 2009; he pursued the broader task of promoting “memory and justice as the critical foundations for the rule of law and genuine national reconciliation.”

The scope of this work has been immense, arduous, and painfully difficult in Cambodia’s transitioning, polarized society. Despite the destruction, loss, or absence of records, DC-Cam was able to collect and assemble over one million documents, providing over half of these as evidence in the war crimes trials. They digitized these documents for online public access; produced digital mapping of over 23,000 mass graves in Cambodia’s “killing fields”; excavated samples of human skeletal remains for forensic examination; conducted interviews with over 10,000 persons, both victims and perpetrators; implemented research, publishing, and educational programs on genocide, transitional justice and human rights; and promoted public participation in the whole process. Yet YOUK’s work is not only turned towards the past, it also looks to Cambodia’s future: he recognizes that preserving and understanding the past must serve as a powerful safeguard against all those who may seek to distort or erase it.

Today, YOUK is engaged in building the Sleuk Rith Institute, an ambitious project which will house a museum, archives and library; a research center; and a graduate program on crimes against humanity to sustain what DC-Cam has accomplished and serve as a resource center for a world deeply scarred and still threatened by genocide.

All this is not an abstract mission for YOUK but one that is profoundly personal. Of his mother, who, borrowing five US dollars, pushed him to flee Cambodia and whom he would only see some twenty years later, he says: “I do this for my mother who suffered… I want her to be a free woman, not to carry all the tragedy in her heart and in her life.” It is a deeply-felt commitment he has widened into the work of remembrance, justice, and healing for all Cambodians.

In electing YOUK CHHANG to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his great, unstinting labor in preserving the memory of the Cambodian genocide, and his leadership and vision in transforming the memory of horror into a process of attaining and preserving justice in his nation and the world.

Salamat Po. I am humbled by this most prestigious award. In receiving it, I am reminded of a thought I often have as a survivor: “If you have survived genocide, you are blessed in many ways. You can begin again. You find a place to live, get a job, make friends, and start a family. But physical survival is the easy part. You can also be unlucky in just as many ways. Genocide breaks you. Your heart aches from losing the people you loved. You are haunted by your memories. You feel guilt at merely surviving when so many died. And worst of all, you can lose hope.”

I am reminded every day by survivors and the people who advocate on their behalf, to not lose hope. I take heart in the relentless strength of survivors and the heroic, kind-hearted people who help them. This award is a reminder, on behalf of my mother and all mothers in Cambodia who have survived the genocide, of the kindness of the Filipinos. The Filipinos opened their country to Cambodian refugees in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime’s collapse in the 1980s. The Philippine government and people, along with other countries including the United States, rose to the occasion in helping us. In receiving this award, I want to take the opportunity to thank the Philippines for their kindness back then. Your help to the Cambodian people was a shining example to not give up hope.

I also want to say that it is important to remember the mistakes of the past. We must remember mistakes as a decisive act at all levels of society from individuals to communities and governments. Remembering mistakes is not easy because it requires us to consciously accept additional pain in the present so that our children will not relive our mistakes in the future. But this is the pathway to justice. Justice will always begin and end with the duty of memory.

Again, salamat po, mula sa kaibuturan ng aking puso.

The power of the arts to raise awareness, shape identities, impel action, and change societies is a truth commonly acknowledged, yet it is not always evident. In the Philippines, no theater organization has been as committed and effective for so long in demonstrating this truth as the PHILIPPINE EDUCATIONAL THEATER ASSOCIATION (PETA).

Now on its fiftieth year, PETA was founded with the initial vision of creating a “national theater” in the Philippines. Working out of a theater in the old ruins of Intramuros, Manila, this non-profit organization rose to prominence with groundbreaking productions in Filipino, the national language, that were remarkable for their artistry and social relevance, at a time of resurgent nationalism and deepening political crisis in the country. After Martial Law was declared, PETA stayed active, together with other groups, in staging theater as a medium for protest and conscientization even under a dictatorship. By the time democracy was restored in 1986, PETA had built a fund of experience, knowledge, and skills to respond to new and continuing challenges, staying true to its vision of a “people’s theater’ directly engaged with the realities of the time.

PETA has grown way beyond its early traditions as a theater company. It is today an integrated, people-based cultural collective engaged not only in performance but also in training, curriculum development, national and international network building, and mobilizing communities using a participatory approach that is rooted in local culture and responsive to real issues in the larger society.

Operating as a collective of “artist-teachers,” and now with its own permanent home in the PETA Theater Center, PETA’s major units include Kalinangan Ensemble, its repertory and performing arm; the School of People’s Theater engaged in year-round training and community development; and a Special Programs unit that undertakes specific advocacies, ranging from women’s and children’s rights and the plight of domestic and overseas workers, to environmental protection, reproductive health, and electoral reform. Focused on the trifold goals of artistic excellence, holistic education, and social development, PETA has fostered people’s creativity in combining the traditional and contemporary; infusing this creativity into the pedagogical practices of the country’s schools; and advancing a people’s development agenda by empowering communities and releasing their creative energies to effect positive social change.

Two sterling examples illustrate the range and diversity of PETA’s development engagements. From 2005 to 2010, PETA took the lead in the Greater Mekong Sub-region Partnership, which mobilized, mentored, and supported a host of performing artists from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and southern China to effectively undertake advocacy-through-the-arts on issues that included gender, health, sexuality, and HIV-AIDS. Then in 2013, working with local partners in the immediate aftermath of super-typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda’s devastation, PETA launched the bold initiative Lingap Sining (Nurturing Through the Arts), a culturally-grounded, participatory program in Leyte province that creatively harnessed the arts in interventions ranging from emergency relief and psychosocial debriefings to disaster preparedness training and the building of more resilient, DRR (disaster risk reduction)-ready communities.

Over five decades, PETA has produced 540 original, translated, or adapted plays, reaching an audience of close to a million across the nation and abroad; it has helped form more than three hundred community-based culture collectives; and conducted training workshops that have involved 4,650 artists, school teachers, community leaders, and development workers. Still, these “artist-teachers” remain clear-eyed and steadfast about the future; PETA president Cecilia B. Garrucho asserts, “Our vision is to have a nation of fully-actualized citizens, creative, and able to find a way, a solution, even when it seems like there is none.”

In electing the PHILIPPINE EDUCATIONAL THEATER ASSOCIATION to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes its bold, collective contributions in shaping the theater arts as a force for social change, its impassioned, unwavering work in empowering communities in the Philippines, and the shining example it has set as one of the leading organizations of its kind in Asia.

(The response was delivered by PETA President, Cecilia B. Garrucho)

In 1967, PETA staged Bayaning Huwad, a Filipino translation of Virgina Moreno’s The Straw Patriot, directed by PETA founder Cecile Guidote. For me, as a young person then, the play was a powerful lesson about Philippine history and heritage. It was my very first time to watch a play where the actors spoke in Filipino. I sat there overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of our own language. I remember asking, how have I become a total stranger to my language and to my culture? That play changed the entire direction of my life. I felt that, as a Filipino, I have finally come home.

Inspired by the play, I joined PETA. We were taught very early on that whatever we learned as artists, we were to share by teaching others, especially non-theater people. We were to use our art to serve. We went in small teams to barangays all over the country. The purpose was always to draw out the creative power of ordinary folk, women in poor communities, students and public school teachers, child workers in sugarcane fields, farmers, workers, and fisherfolk. It didn’t matter whether they were literate or not. The PETA workshops’ main goal was to give people the creative tools to be able to tell their stories that tackled ways to solve their common problems that would bring about healing from trauma and that spoke of their dreams and aspirations.

As actors, we would bring the stories of the people we met to life on stage so that their voices could be heard. It was then that I finally came to understand the power of theater to transform lives, both mine and of others. I tell my story of personal transformation simply because it is a most common one. PETA’s other artist-teachers have similar stories to tell. These inspired them to embrace a vision larger than themselves, to use theater to help transform the lives of people.

So, armed with this commitment, the artist-members plunged into years of trailblazing work, adding more productions to PETA’s list of original plays. Collaborating with many sectors, PETA developed and refined its pedagogy of people’s theater. This we shared with groups across the country, with our partners in the Mekong Region and Asia, as well as with migrant Filipinos and many other groups in Europe, North America, and Australia.

Fifty years have passed. We continue to do what we do because with the stories we discover in the communities, we see potential for a better society to be realized. With every play we put on stage that inspires young people to reflect, to ask questions, to give way to imagination, understanding, and insight, we see the possibility of a generation of Filipinos who could embrace the task of building a better future for our society.

And because theater is an art that involves so many, allow us to thank those who contributed to our cultural work throughout PETA’s 50 years. We remember our members and staff who have passed away. We thank all the PETA alumnae, current members, and staff, many of whom are here with us tonight. Please stand to be acknowledged. We thank our board of trustees, past and present. Our many partners, too many to mention, but they know who they are, who understood and supported our work. Our appreciation also goes to Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, PETA visionary and founder. And we share this award with all theater groups, who, despite limited resources, keep theater alive in this country. Most of all, we deeply thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for recognizing that arts and culture have an important role to play in building a nation.

This award inspires us to create more stories for our people, so that through the power of theater and arts, we can move forward with hope to create a just, peaceful, and inclusive society. Maraming salamat po.

In a time that has seen nations violently torn apart by ethnic and religious wars, it is important to be reminded of the healing power of the arts in showing that while culture is what makes people of various ethnicities, religions, and nationalities distinct, it is also culture that connects them in the awareness of a shared humanity that is enriched by such differences.

This truth lies at the heart of the lifework of LIGAYA FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA. Born to a prominent Catholic family in Marikina, Metro Manila, FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA had always loved dance and the arts. A turning point in her life came when she married a schoolmate and moved to his home in Sulu where, in the next three decades, she immersed herself in the rich cultural life of the Muslim South. In the midst of the region’s secessionist and insurgent conflicts, she turned her love for the arts into a vocation as cultural researcher, educator, artist and advocate of the indigenous arts of the southern Philippines, particularly the Sulu Archipelago.

Her signature involvement has been the study, conservation, practice and promotion of the dance style called pangalay (“gift offering,” or “temple of dance” in Sanskrit), a pre-Islamic dance tradition among the Samal, Badjao, Jama Mapun, and Tausug peoples of the provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. A highly intricate and expressive dance of many variations, traditionally performed in weddings and other festive events, pangalay has the richest movement vocabulary of all ethnic dances in the Philippines and is the country’s living link to the ancient, classical dance traditions elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Fascinated by its beauty and recognizing its importance in the cultural heritage of the Sulu Archipelago and the entire Filipino nation, she was saddened to see that pangalay was becoming a marginalized tradition. Thus she committed her life to patiently documenting the dance and its allied expressions; teaching the dance using a method she personally developed, promoting it by choreographing and organizing performances, and making it known to the world through her lectures, performances, and writings on pangalay and the visual arts of the Sulu Archipelago.

Working mainly in an individual capacity and using her own personal resources, she inspired the formation of performing arts groups, networked with dance scholars and practitioners in Asia, and presented both traditional and innovative pangalay choreographies in and outside the country. Moving back to Metro Manila in 1999, she formed the AlunAlun Dance Circle (ADC) and lent her own home for a dance studio, to study, teach, and perform pangalay and other traditional dance forms. The group has since done hundreds of performances and workshops throughout the country.

For FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA, traditional dances like pangalay are not museum pieces but something to be nurtured as a living tradition that grows as societies change. Thus she has innovated with pangalay performances done to modern music, conveying contemporary themes like women’s rights and environmental conservation. Yet she has always stressed that art must stay rooted in the basic values that humanize, beauty, grace, a disciplined spirituality, and harmony with nature and fellow humans. “Without looking to the past,” she says, “something really new cannot be created.”

In electing LIGAYA FERNANDO-AMILBANGSA to receive the 2015 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her single-minded crusade in preserving the endangered artistic heritage of southern Philippines, and in creatively propagating a dance form that celebrates and deepens the sense of shared cultural identity among Asians.

As a youngster in 1954, I shook hands with a smiling, tall, gentleman. He was Ramon Magsaysay, the popular third president of the Republic of the Philippines. I imagine that that handshake more than half a century in advance was a prelude of this stunning event, with me as a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Two decades later in 1975, the Tambuli Cultural Troupe, which I founded the year before, performed on this Main Theater stage, in celebration of Philippine Independence Day. The troupe performed again at the CCP in 1976 at the Little Theater, in conjunction with the first Tawi Tawi Arts and Crafts Exhibits, which I organized. The goodwill performances were simply magical for me and the young dancers from the Sulu College of Technology and Oceanography, a unit of the Mindanao State University in Bongao, Tawi Tawi. Our cultural activities during those Martial Law years served as a unifying force, and painted a favorable image of the Tausug, Samal, Badjaw, and Jama Mapun peoples of the Sulu archipelago. Thankfully, my work gained momentum, inspired by the countless native co-workers whose cooperation enabled me to document their artistic heritage of which every Filipino can be proud. Two National Artists for dance also inspired me: Leonor Orosa-Goquingco and Francisca Reyes-Aquino, herself a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee in 1962.

What else can a cultural worker say while savoring this moment of magic with deepest feeling? Not much, except to emphasize the importance of keeping alive the folk artistic expressions that link us to our past and to one another, and to the rest of Asia and the world. I appeal for renewed efforts to develop a sensible program for dance education and conservation of indigenous dance forms, and to provide facilities conducive to the well-being of dancers. Allied to this, I appeal for more assistance and other incentives for academic research and publication. I wish more government and private institutions in the Philippines would be sincerely responsive to the plight of researchers and authors who need funds, more than sympathy, to carry on with their work. Their findings will enable others in the cultural sector to teach and write better, conserve, create, and innovate for the greater glory and growth of artistic traditions in the Philippines.

Of special interest are living artifacts or records of the past like pangalay, also known as igal or pansak, a dance tradition that affirms our cultural affinities. To see beyond the authentic nature of pangalay is to see the essence of Filipino ancestry: artistically refined, dignified, and profound.

Safeguarding an artistic tradition like pangalay goes beyond sharing its beauty and versatility through changing times. It is promoting respect for tradition which is vital to national identity and unity. A fast-changing world with unstoppable growth patterns needs the silent eloquence of an ancient symbol like pangalay or igal residing in a moving body to express what it feels than what it sees. Respecting such symbols can contribute to the greatness of the Filipino nation.

Honorable trustees, thank you very much. Fellow cultural workers, I share this recognition with you. Mga kalasahan ku, mga bagay ku, mga kakampungan ku, magsarang sukud tuud makaan kamimun. Mabuhay!

On August 6, 1945, a single atomic bomb reduced the Japanese city of Hiroshima to ashes, taking tens of thousands of precious lives. In its aftermath, the world’s first atomic bomb killed an estimated 140,000 more through radiation and other sicknesses. The bombing’s survivors, called the hibakusha, continue to suffer even to this day. This unprecedented act in the second World War became the defining image of man’s capacity for mass destruction in modern times. Hiroshima’s horror spurred major efforts at nuclear disarmament after the war.

Amid the cry of “No More Hiroshima!” the United Nations adopted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970. But the politics of the Cold War and today’s “War on Terror” have set back efforts for full disarmament. In 1970 there were already five nuclear-weapons states; four more countries have since acquired nuclear- weapons capability. Other countries and non-state groups may have already acquired or developed nuclear weapons. Technology has made these weapons not only more available, but also vastly deadlier. A 1980 UN report said there were then close to fifty thousand nuclear weapons in the world, with destructive power equivalent to a million Hiroshima-type A-bombs.

TADATOSHI AKIBA, the three-term mayor of Hiroshima, is an acknowledged leader in the global campaign for complete nuclear disarmament. He first became active in the anti-nuclear movement as a student in the ’60s; his efforts intensified while teaching in a US university, after earning his doctorate in mathematics. Realizing that the world seemed to have forgotten Hiroshima’s tragedy, he resolved to do all he could so its lessons would be remembered — and heeded.

In 1979, AKIBA began by launching the Hibakusha Travel Grants Program, through which American and other journalists visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and listened to atomic bomb survivors tell, and re-tell, their horrific story to the world. He pursued his peace advocacy further when elected to the Japanese House of Representatives in 1990, and after assuming office as Hiroshima’s mayor in 1999.

AKIBA painfully recognized that Hiroshima, as history’s first victim of nuclear warfare, has the moral obligation to warn the world of the nuclear danger. Thus, he placed himself and his city at the forefront of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. Building on the work of his predecessors, he developed Hiroshima as the “International Peace Culture City,” with its civic facilities, exhibitions, commemorations, and educational activities, all these raising peace consciousness in Japan and throughout the world.

AKIBA spearheaded Mayors for Peace, a movement launched in 1982 on the premise that the world’s mayors are best positioned to mobilize citizen action in vigorous advocacy for global peace. As its president since 1999, he led the movement on an anti-nuclear campaign and expanded its reach. In 1999, Mayors for Peace had 461 member-cities; it now has 4,069 member-cities from 144 countries and regions worldwide. Its sustained campaign includes educational events, anti-nuclear demonstrations, active participation in the cyclical NPT review conferences, and aggressive lobbying with governments and international bodies.

In 2003, Mayors for Peace launched their 2020 Vision campaign to escalate pressure on governments to abolish all nuclear weapons by 2020, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. And in 2008, they issued the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, setting forth a roadmap to guide national governments towards the total abolition of nuclear weapons. AKIBA recognizes that nuclear disarmament is an exceedingly complex issue caught up in the volatile realities of global realpolitik. Yet he remains steadfast, believing that the world’s citizens can change the course of the global community, when they are able to act in concert.

Disarmingly mild-mannered, he nonetheless asserts: “We shall do everything in our power to break the chain of hatred and violence, to bravely set out on the road to reconciliation, and to ensure that the world abolishes all nuclear weapons without delay.”

In electing TADATOSHI AKIBA to receive the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his principled and determined leadership in a sustained global campaign to mobilize citizens, pressure governments, and build the political will to create a world free from the perils of nuclear war.

The Honorable Benigno S. Aquino III, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and friends. I am profoundly honored to be one of the recipients of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award. I am grateful to the trustees for the personal honor they have bestowed on me, but more importantly, for their attention to the cause for which I have been working.

I hereby express my glad acceptance on behalf of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the A-bomb survivors in those cities whose voices I represent, and the more than four thousand members of our campaigning NGO Mayors for Peace. I believe the problem of nuclear weapons will prove to be the decisive issue of our times. I do not claim that it is more important than any of the myriad other global problems we face. Certainly, our environmental problems are equally urgent and threatening. However, our success in solving those other problems will be determined by our handling of nuclear weapons. I am sure I need not expound here on the dire consequences of allowing nuclear weapons to spin out of control; the worst case scenario is the extinction of the human race.

However, many tend to overlook the positive benefits that would derive from a global effort to eliminate them. If the international community were to sign a nuclear weapons convention and initiate the process of finding and eliminating all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials, we would be saying, in effect, “We will cooperate to assure our collective survival.”

This very process would be both the cause and effect of a dramatic change in international relations, signaling a major paradigm shift that would then open the door to cooperation in other spheres. To me, nothing is more important than this shift from the dominance paradigm to a partnership paradigm. I am convinced that we must accomplish this shift if we are to keep our planet hospitable to human life.

In this context, I am more than gratified that our campaign to liberate humanity from the threat of nuclear annihilation has been recognized by the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, and I am thankful for the recognition this award will bring to us from a wider public and for the new creative energy it will generate, especially here in Asia. In sum, this award will strengthen our determination and unite us all, for a nuclear weapon free world by 2020.

Thank you very much.

In Islam, authority rests in knowledge. In times of crisis and for guidance in day-to-day life, Muslims turn to scholars. It is their role to apply the truth of the Holy Qur’an and the lessons of the Prophet Muhammad to human life in matters large and small. Yet, Islam’s religious scholars-who these days may be teachers or preachers or public intellectuals, and are often all three-do not always see eye-to-eye. Their debates over the centuries have produced the heterogeneous world of Islam today, with its various sects and schools of law. In such debates, the authority of individual thinkers weighs heavily. And in countries like Indonesia, with vast Muslim majorities, intellectuals such as AHMAD SYAFII MAARIF can influence millions and shape the character of national life.

SYAFII MAARIF was born in West Sumatra in 1935. Through his family and early schooling, he was exposed to the teachings of reform Islam as espoused by Muhammadiyah, one of two mass organizations that dominate Muslim life in Indonesia. After university, he shifted naturally into teaching and later earned his doctorate in Islamic thought at the University of Chicago under the eminent scholar of Islam, Fazlur Rahman. By the 1980s, he was an intellectual of serious reputation and a rising leader in Muhammadiyah.

The Indonesian nationalists who declared their country independent in 1945 created a secular state. They chose not to enshrine the Shari’a, Islamic law, as the law of the land for Muslims. Instead, befitting Indonesia’s extraordinary diversity, the new nation’s creed became Panca Sila, whose ecumenical five principles began with “belief in one God” and otherwise spoke to the ideals of a just and civilized humanity, national unity, democracy, and social justice. This decision became a matter of bitter dispute among Indonesian Muslims that lingered under the thirty-year-long dictatorship of Suharto. His downfall in 1998 brought a new era of openness, reform, and democratizaton to Indonesia but also tumultuous sectarian conflict. It was at exactly this time that SYAFII MAARIF assumed leadership of Muhammadiyah and its thirty million members and sympathizers.

SYAFII MAARIF embraced his country’s fresh hopes for democracy and good governance and, in the stormy seas ahead, became a force for calm and moderation. When violence erupted between Indonesian Muslims and Christians, he reminded Muslims that Islam teaches the equality of all people; he took the lead in interfaith dialogues and warned against provocateurs who fanned fear and hate. When activists revived the call for an Islamic state and pressed urgently for implementation of the Shari’a, he opposed them; the nonsectarian principles of Panca Sila, he said, were the right ones for Indonesia’s plural society. And when the impact of 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq reached Indonesia, and when terrorism struck home in Bali and Jakarta, he stressed that “Terrorism is not the authentic face of Islam.” In concert with other moderate leaders, he denounced it as a “crime against humanity.” He said much the same about the new American wars but urged Indonesian Muslims to reject spurious calls to Holy War and to make their protests peacefully. He did so himself.

As Muhammadiyah‘s president, SYAFII MAARIF spurned the trappings of power and resisted the call to politics. Today, at seventy-three and retired, he relishes his role as an independent thinker and mentor to the young. We must learn to look beyond our individual nations, he says, and see the world from a global perspective — “from a human perspective and from a justice perspective.” Indeed, justice is the key to “global wisdom.” Without it, he says, “I think the world will go astray forever.”

In electing AHMAD SYAFII MAARIF to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his guiding Muslims to embrace tolerance and pluralism as the basis for justice and harmony in Indonesia and in the world at large.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman, President and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Distinguished Guests, Fellow Awardees, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I cannot find the right words to express my humble and sincere gratitude to the President and Trustees of the Foundation for having selected me as winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding. What I have actually done so far, particularly through my religio-cultural activities for years in my country, is insignificant compared to this great honor bestowed on me.

The Award itself outweighs my contribution to promoting peace, awakening the ideas of democracy, pluralism, and the spirit of interfaith dialogue that, from time to time, are lively and promising in Indonesia. By opening the window of democracy in 1998, the new forces of the nation, under a reform movement, immediately took the opportunity to recover and revive the democratic tradition bequeathed by our political philosophy enshrined in Panca Sila. Before that, during the era of long-term dictatorship, democracy in practice was non-existent, though in theory, for the regime’s political rhetoric, it was still oft mentioned.

The political transformation to resolidify democracy was certainly not easy. During this dramatic transitional period, Indonesia seriously lacked experienced democratic leaders to deal with the new realities. A culture of mutual distrust among the elite prevailed, while the old and decadent political order still worked hard to reverse the situation. Political and socio-religious conflicts, therefore, were difficult to avoid. The national leadership was dramatically split apart. Because the nation’s economic fundamentals were brittle in the midst of the East Asian monetary crisis, it was as though Indonesia at that time had no future. Beyond that, as the heritage of the New Order, corruption was rampant, and people lost confidence in the government’s ability to cure the situation. It was in these turbulent and confusing circumstances that I was entrusted to lead the Muhammadiyah Movement, one of the most influential Islamic socio-cultural mainstreams in my country, though I felt I lacked the necessary background and experiences to cope with this critical and dangerous political uncertainty.

Soon after, Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama, together with prominent interfaith leaders (Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist), took the initiative to consolidate the nation’s socio-cultural forces in an effort to save the future. Fortunately, our endeavors were highly appreciated and supported by almost all societal segments in Indonesia. My philosophy is simple: not only believers have the right to live and prosper in Indonesia, but non-believers-even atheists-have the right to coexist with believers, on the condition that they respect and honor each other peacefully. Peace is always costly, but without peace, life becomes irrelevant and meaningless!

The Ramon Magsaysay Award has surely confirmed what I have done and will do to honor peace and understanding, and spurn enmity and hate.

Elections are the central institution of Filipino democracy. As Governor GRACE PADACA puts it, they give voters a chance “to get the wrong people out of government and the right people in.” In practice, however, Filipino elections are almost always contests for power among an elite few. In most provinces, a handful of families controls political power from one generation to the next. Everyone else may vote, but the choices are limited to a cast of all-too-familiar characters. Such was the case in Isabela Province when Governor Padaca launched her unlikely political career.

MARIA GRACIA CIELO MAGNO PADACA was born in 1963 and crippled early in childhood by polio. Taunted by other children, she retreated into a world of books and learned to excel at school. She won scholarships to help pay her own way and, by twenty-one, had qualified as a certified public accountant. At Bombo Radyo in Cauayan, Isabela, she took an accounting job and, almost serendipitously, was soon a broadcaster, too. This suited her, she says, because “I could be heard but not seen.”

Every day, for the next fourteen years, hard-hitting “Bombo Grace” took up the issues of the day over the radio. In Isabela, the Dy family controlled politics from the governor’s mansion to the smallest town. As day-by-day PADACA exposed the province’s intractable problems-a stagnating rural economy, multifaceted corruption, a plague of illegal gambling and logging, a ravaged environment-she came to believe that many of them were rooted in the intractable Dys. Yet few dared to challenge them. “This is not what I had been taught democracy should be,” she said. Vowing not to be someone who complained constantly “without lifting a finger,” in 2001 she ran for Congress.

With little money and no political base to speak of, PADACA crisscrossed the province in a borrowed truck, taking her case to the people. Her opponent from the ruling dynasty was declared the winner by forty-eight votes-this after a congressional election tribunal invalidated all the ballots marked “Grace.”

PADACA returned to the fray in 2004 to run for provincial governor. Her opponent was the incumbent, whose father and brother had also been governor. Bucking the opposition of thirty-three mayors and the hysterical charge that she was in league with terrorists, PADACA urged voters to “Free Isabela”, On election day-as her volunteers guarded the ballot boxes-they did. She won by more than forty-four thousand votes.

This was “the easy part,” PADACA says. As governor, she moved quickly to neutralize efforts by Dy loyalists to sabotage her governorship and astutely prioritized her agenda. She paid off two-thirds of the province’s huge debts and restored its fiscal credibility. She abandoned a bankrupt medical scheme for a sounder government-backed plan. And she launched a program to subsidize rice and corn farmers. These programs yielded fresh funds for new infrastructure, better medical coverage for more beneficiaries, and a boon for the province’s farmers and agribusiness sector. Meanwhile, PADACA increased the budgets for education and reforestation and made inroads against illegal logging and gambling. With the province on a healthy footing, she challenged the dynasty again in 2007 and was elected to a second term.

As she pursues her ambitious agenda today, Governor PADACA stays in close touch with her constituents. She challenges them to reach beyond their political comfort zones and to “defend what is good in society.” She reminds them that the people of Isabela are no longer “the victims of cheaters and opportunists.” Her victory is their victory, she says. “I will work every day to prove that democracy is the better choice.”

In electing GRACE PADACA to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes her empowering voters in the Philippines’ Isabela Province to reclaim their democratic right to elect leaders of their own choosing and to contribute as full partners in their own development.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends. Good afternoon.

You must have observed how the mere act of standing and sitting is difficult for me. Thankfully, people now pay much less attention to my physical handicap, as they focus more on the challenging things that I have hurdled and continue to face as leader of one of the largest provinces in the Philippines, the province of Isabela.

Four years after we Isabelinos freed ourselves from an oppressive political structure, we are happy that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation once more brings to focus what we dared do and succeeded in doing-make democracy work, especially in the matter of using wisely our right to elect our leaders. If our victory in Isabela has to be truly meaningful, it needs to be replicated in other parts of the country, especially that in less than two years, we will all once more go to the polls and elect not only our local leaders but the new president of the Philippines.

Sen. Barack Obama of the United States talks about the audacity of hope but many of us, Asians, who have suffered so much more but have also been blessed to rise above our many challenges, need also to talk about the burden of the brave-the need to continue succeeding after raising the hopes of our people. Because if we ourselves fall short of expectations, especially if those who are shaken by our radical actions continue to work against our people’s interests, we will have further weakened the faith of our people in democracy.

Amazing victories are actually very fragile, and need to be protected. Please don’t just be happy for us. Please continue to be supportive and encouraging. Many times, I need the encouragement very badly. Every success is not just one person’s job. That’s why I share this award with all of you who have been cheering me on, helping me and helping Isabela.

Lastly, kindly allow me to use this chance to pay my dues to the One Great Being who made all of this possible. Way back in 2001, when very few outside Isabela had even heard about a Grace Padaca, I already won the elections for congressman, but somebody else was proclaimed. But — electoral victory was not the most important thing to me. I just longed for the chance to be able to say to as many people as I could reach: “To God be the glory!” for all the many seemingly impossible things that were starting to happen then and were changing the situation in our province. I was deprived of that chance seven years ago, only to stand before all of you now, for no less than the Ramon Magsaysay Awards and proclaim not only the words “To God be the glory!” Because glory upon glory has happened. Now I can say to as many people as I can reach “All glory and honor is yours, almighty Father!”

To Him who blesses us all, and to all of you, maraming, maraming salamat po.