Not so long ago, to be royal was to be power itself, and grace, and virtue. But no more. Although a regal aura yet clings to kingly names, of Asia’s mighty dynasties few survive to reign or rule. And for most that do, respect and admiration are no longer automatic. They must be earned.

In this spirit, HER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS MAHA CHAKRI SIRINDHORN lives out her role as a member of Thailand’s royal family. Born thirty-six years ago, she is a princess descended of many royal kings. Her Chakri ancestors saved Thailand for the Thais and built a modern state. Later they relinquished absolute power to pave the way for rule by law. Since 1946 her father, King Bhumibol, has been his country’s constant beacon, providing certainty that even though governments come and go, Thailand will endure. These days PRINCESS SIRINDHORN is often at his side. Father and daughter are good company. They share a preference for simplicity and a limitless interest in the welfare of Thai citizens. “On and on,” she once wrote in a poem, “I follow the quick steps of my Father.”

Even so, PRINCESS SIRINDHORN has a presence all her own.

Embracing all things Thai, she has become a force for cultural preservation. At her initiative, dying handicraft skills are once again being passed from master to apprentice, shadow plays rejuvenated, sacred temples restored, and classical works of music recorded for posterity. She herself plays several Thai instruments, preferring the ranaad-ek, a solo wooden xylophone till now played almost exclusively by men. By singing and performing in public with Thais of all walks of life—unthinkable for royal women of the past—she has helped spur an unprecedented revival of traditional music.

Educated from grade one through her doctorate entirely in Thailand, PRINCESS SIRINDHORN has interests ranging from classical Asian languages to modern educational techniques and theories. In 1984 she mastered remote sensing technology—a tool for studying Thailand’s beleaguered environment—and today she teaches history at the Royal Military Academy. As an inveterate world traveler, she generates esteem for her country abroad. The books she writes about her travels become best-sellers, and the proceeds from them she donates to needy children.

Of all things Thai, PRINCESS SIRINDHORN most of all embraces Thai children. Through a foundation she started, many of Bangkok’s orphans and unwanted children receive attention and find new homes, while hundreds of refugee children are cared for by the Thai Red Cross, which, with her mother, she leads. Also, through her efforts, deaf and blind children throughout Thailand now have special schools, and thousands of pupils in remote border areas receive nutritious lunches and learn self-reliance by growing their vegetables. Generous with her own purse, PRINCESS SIRINDHORN inspires generosity in others. Her projects are well funded and well managed. Moreover, to Thailand’s children she is not a distant benefactor. She takes stock of their progress personally, visiting them everywhere she goes and bringing them cheer.

Cheer is perhaps PRINCESS SIRINDHORN’s most pervasive gift to all the Thais. They are cheered by her modesty, for she speaks softly and spurns ostentatious make-up and clothing. They are cheered by her seriousness, for she turns away from idle celebrity to devote herself to service. Not least they are cheered by her cheerfulness. In the smiling PRINCESS SIRINDHORN, Thais find an image of what they themselves aspire to be: a people moored happily to their traditions, yet treading confidently in the modern world.

In electing H. R. H. PRINCESS MAHA CHAKRI SIRINDHORN to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes her making her royal office an instrument of enlightened endeavor for Thailand, and her sparkling embodiment of the best that is Thai.

I am deeply gratified by the honor that the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has bestowed upon me. This award is known to me because it bears the name of the illustrious late president of the Philippines, who was concerned about the well-being of his countrymen and worked with courage all his life toward his goal of bettering their condition. Since 1958 the award has been given to people and organizations in Asia that render service to mankind in many ways.

It is the duty, and also the highest aspiration, of a Thai to take part in any work aiming at the development and prosperity of our beloved country, Thailand, and to help our less fortunate compatriots have a better life. As Thailand progresses toward the twenty-first century, the role of the monarchy still retains many traditional aspects. The one that I find very important is that the king and queen are considered as parents of the people: Their Majesties must take good care of all their children. My siblings and I have been brought up on this principle as part of our dual role of Thai citizen and member of the royal family.

My parents paid a state visit here in 1963. Since that time I have learned much about your beautiful and interesting country, and about the close ties and cooperation between the Philippines and Thailand in the political, economic, technical, and cultural fields. The kind invita¬tion of your government enables me to come to see and learn more. My visit to various places and meeting distinguished people during this trip are, for me, valuable experiences that help widen my worldview. The Award of the RMAF assures me that I am on the right track. This generous gesture gives me willpower to improve the efficiency of my work. Please accept my heartfelt thanks.

As for the cash component of the Magsaysay Award I have just received, I would like to offer it as a token of admiration to the Philip¬pine government for its efforts to help its people recover from the devastating effects of the recent volcanic eruption as well as other natural calamities. It is a good chance for me to associate myself, my relatives, and my friends from Thailand with the monumental responsi¬bilities you are now shouldering.

Again I would like to express my sincere thanks to Her Excellency the President, the Philippine government, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for the hospitality you have extended me during my first visit to this friendly country—which is also a close partner of ours in ASEAN. Mabuhay and Maraming Salamat!

In recent years Asia’s prosperous urbanites have discovered the rural arts. Handicrafts from villages now adorn their city homes. Meanwhile, polished versions of country-dances and plays appear on television and grace official extravaganzas. Yet the finer elements of urban culture are rarely introduced to the village world; its inhabitants are thought too unsophisticated to appreciate them. By introducing modern plays and films to rural folk in southern India, K. V. SUBBANNA is making a powerful case for the universality of art.

The rural town of Heggodu is home to some five hundred people in the Kannada-speaking State of Karnataka. There, areca palms and betel-pepper vines provide members of the SUBBANNA family with a comfortable living. But theater is their passion. In 1949 SUBBANNA formed the theater group, Ninasam, to stage local favorites based on the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata; his father became the group’s first president.

After finishing a literary degree at Mysore University, SUBBANNA returned home with fresh ideas for Ninasam. Under his leadership, its repertoire grew to include Kannada-language renditions of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Brecht, as well as new plays by Kannada playwrights, plays for children, and modern adaptations of classics from the Indian canon. With help from the state government, he built a large local theater, a rarity in rural India, and introduced modern staging and lighting. Heggodu’s citizens liked what they saw and came back for more.

Ninasam’s success led SUBBANNA to form the Ninasam Theater Institute in 1980. In this “theater ashram,” fifteen students a year learn theater arts in a Gandhian atmosphere of simple living and hard work. An itinerant troupe formed from the institute’s graduates perform Ninasam’s plays the length and breadth of Karnataka often in open-air theaters before crowds of seven hundred or more. Following Ninasam’s example, and with its practical assistance, local theater companies are now being formed in other rural districts.

Film followed theater. Ninasam began introducing film classics to Karnataka audiences in the 1970s. Today, participants in its annual film-appreciation course view works of leading filmmakers like Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa, both former Magsaysay awardees, and Ingmar Bergman. By showing such films, Ninasam is bridging the gulf between rural and urban cultures. India’s democracy, SUBBANNA believes demands cultural diffusion of this kind.

Playing many parts in his time, SUBBANNA also crafts traditional Indian myths and tales into plays that probe modern issues. As a publisher, he brings out new works by regional writers as well as his own poems and translations of foreign movie scripts and books.

With financial prudence and a gift for bringing others into leadership, SUBBANNA has built Ninasam to last. Its headquarters in Heggodu boasts a library, rehearsal hall, guesthouse, and office, in addition to its famous theater. At fifty-nine, SUBBANNA says, he now leaves most of the real work to junior colleagues who include his son, Ashkara. But as one admirer has pointed out, self-effacing SUBBANNA still carries on multiple projects, “seemingly oblivious to the scale of his activities.”

In electing K. V. SUBBANNA to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enriching rural Karnataka with the world’s best films and the delight and wonder of the living stage.

Ours is a land of rivers, and yours, of seas. From the people of my land of rivers, I bring love and greetings to you, people of land and seas. Kindly accept them.

Yours is a land of nobility and generosity. You have instituted this Award to weave the Asian peoples together in friendship and to recognize and foster the new-sprung sprouts of the vitality of our continent in far-flung corners of our various nations. And by instituting it in the name of Ramon Magsaysay, one of your national leaders as well as a great Asian personality, you have made this Award still more valuable. Many of my distinguished fellow countrymen have already been given this honor. Now, when you bestow the same honor on me, I accept it with deep happiness, acknowledging the love and nobleness of your people and remembering my predecessors who have received it. I accept it humbly and gratefully.

I have my reservations about the practice of giving or receiving awards in a democratic system. Yet, this Award has brought me immense happiness. Although the Award has been conferred on me, it is very clear that it has not come to me alone or to me in my personal capacity. If it were a smaller award than this, it might have given rise to such an illusion. But this is a very big Award, so big that I cannot entertain any such illusions. The Award has, in fact, been conferred upon the institution of which I am just a representative figure the Ninasam Institutions; the Akshara Publications; my village, Heggodu; and my state, Karnataka. Thus this is an Award that, far from bloating my ego, rather fills my heart with a genuine joy.

India is a vast country, composed of a number of large and small states. My state, Karnataka, neither too big nor too small, has an area and a population about three-quarters that of your country. We have in India about twenty different regional languages, with their own distinct histories going back about one or two thousand years, and all very rich in literature. My own language, Kannada, is about two thousand years old and has a great literary tradition. And our modern literature has such vitality and variety that it can easily occupy a unique place in world literature.

In Karnataka there are the Western Hills, where it rains plentifully, and the hills are covered in lush evergreen forests. Amidst these hills, far away from city centers and nestling among the forests, is my little hamlet, Heggodu. Its population is a bear five hundred. This hamlet and another ten or twelve still smaller hamlets around it, makes up what can be called a rural commune. And the Ninasam Institutions are a symbol of this commune’s tireless endeavors to realize its dreams of a new India.

England physically occupied our country for scores of years. All through this period, the “scientific civilization” of the Northern Hemisphere carried out a relentless attack upon us, an attack continuing even in the present time. But terming it an attack, in the same sense as a physical attack, is not so simple, as it raises many complex and important questions.

In his film Rashomon, the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa tells the story of a bandit and a samurai and his wife. But the film is ambiguous. Did the bandit rape the samurai’s wife, or did she, in fact, feel attracted and offer herself to him? Did the bandit murder the samurai, or did the samurai commit suicide? The relationship and the interaction between Western scientific civilization and us is, likewise, very complex in nature. It is, at the same time, an aggression as well as a self-offering, a conflict and a communion, a confrontation and a coition.

This process of conflict and confluence is not limited to India. It is, in fact, a worldwide phenomenon. The various underdeveloped and developing countries of that large part of the globe we call the Third World have all been participants in this great churning. They have all, in their own manner and corresponding to their respective traditions and histories, generated specific responses to this challenge.

Although the Third World countries have put up a strong resistance to this scientific civilization, it cannot be denied that ultimately this same scientific civilization has been the propelling power of human history for several centuries. Besides its advancements in science and technology, it has propagated new ideas and values, such as liberty, equality, and democracy. These same values were accorded high importance in ancient times, but the credit for making them the vital center of human life and realizing them in concrete terms goes entirely to the modern scientific civilization.

Take the example of our own country. Through a long cultural history, we had built up a rich and complex tradition. Yet the same tradition had made our culture totally inhuman in many respects by generating and legitimizing caste division and discrimination, a cruel degradation and evil dogmatism, and a senseless, soulless barbarism. It was the scientific civilization that fully opened our eyes to these depravities.

But this scientific civilization now seems irrevocably set on a tragic course. This is probably due to the perversions that it engendered within itself. The people who shaped this civilization suffered under an illusion that they alone constituted the world and that all other people and parts of the earth were mere raw materials and tools for their own progress.

Freedom and equality are values that constitute a dialectical whole. We need to comprehend their dialectical aspects simultaneously if we aspire to achieve an essential balance, or samatva, as we call it in our language. The slightest tilt of this balance could result in the destruction of both values.

One-half of modern civilization, the capital-centered, freedom-oriented bloc, has stressed freedom, while the other half, the proletarian-centered, equality-oriented bloc, emphasized equality. Nevertheless, do we not today find that both these camps have destroyed both values?

One of our greatest political thinkers and activists, Ram Manohar Lohia, used to say that for our Third World, the modes of the scientific civilization were irrelevant and meaningless. Despite their extreme differences in external terms, the ultimate objective of both is the same: development. For them, development only means multiplying the means of material comforts and pleasures, moving forward in a linear pattern. Where can this kind of multiplicatory materialism finally lead mankind? What salvation can we hope for from this soul-denying, self-fueling, and self-consuming system? Is this kind of materialism to be the most desirable and the ultimate objective of mankind?

This fragmented concept of development has serious flaws and harms because, while human desires seem to be insatiable, nature is not inexhaustible. It cannot and will not yield to us forever, as we have been learning. Moreover, the driving force behind this kind of development, and its yardstick, is competition, which in its turn only generates aggression, envy, enmity, and violence.

At this stage in our world’s history, the thinking and the experiments carried out in the Third World over the ages could well prove to be vitally important. We in India, for instance, have not lost our memories of the Buddha, who as long as two thousand years ago said that desire was the root cause of evil; nor of our culture, which holds simplicity and restraint as two of the primary virtues. In our own time, Mahatma Gandhi was a living expression of such beliefs.

Gandhi wanted decentralization and moral restraint to be our ultimate goals. In place of mutual competition, he advocated mutual love and cooperation. For him, progress or development was not an exclusive, linear movement, but rather an all-inclusive holistic process. Here every human being would be able, within his own limitations and within the framework of his own space, time, and society, and in consonance with his fellowmen, gradually to achieve self-fulfilling self-expression. He termed this process sarvodaya the ennoblement of all, together, at the same time.

Vinoba Bhave, a disciple of Gandhi and himself a recipient of the Magsaysay Award, tried all through his life to make sarvodaya a central principle of our national life. His ideas, though never fully implemented, yet have had a fundamental influence on our social consciousness.

Along with Gandhi and Bhave, we also have Dr. Ambedkar, a truly extraordinary figure. Born into the lowest strata of our social hierarchy, an untouchable, he broke down the most rigid and cruel walls that our ossified society had built and attained a peak of excellence with our people conferring on him leadership of the group that framed our modern constitution. A similar personality was Gopala Gowda, who arose from very humble circumstances, yet he organized the tenant farmers of our region and began a people’s movement that achieved national significance.

Our modern history has thus been a constant exploration for a balance, a proper balance in terms of political and philosophical pursuits, social relations, and economic equations. While persons like Gandhi and Bhave, coming from privileged classes of our society, taught us spiritual strength, those like Ambedkar and Gowda, coming from the deprived classes, trained us in political and people power.

The whole process of Third World countries searching for a meaningful new balance can also be viewed from another perspective. It is a process where the “thesis” of our several cultures confronts the “antithesis” of the modern scientific civilization, thereby creating an integrative, new “synthesis.”

The honor that you have conferred on me recognizing me as a representative link in an endeavor being carried out in a rural corner of my country is really an honor given to all of us of the Third World engaged in forging a new synthesis, a new integrative way of life. I can never forget that I am but a little link in this movement, even in my own land. The work of my institution is only a continuance of our tradition.

For example, Shivarama Karanth, one of our most original intellectuals a polyglot Leonardo da Vinci-like figure who can easily be counted among the world’s greatest writers carried out similar activities forty years ago in a remote corner of our state. Now stepping lightly into his nineties, he continues to be a living inspiration to us all; when we built an auditorium for our Ninasam Institute, we could think of no more worthy person to name it after.

The Magsaysay Award has often been compared with the Nobel Prize, an honor usually bestowed for individual excellence and personal achievement. The Magsaysay Award, I feel, is given more in consideration of the attitude, the mode, and the social aspect of an achievement rather than of the achievement itself. A case in point is the late Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay of our country who is one of those honored by you. She had no extraordinary excellence in any of the activities she pursued. There were a number of others who were better political workers, social reformers, organizers, and artists than she. But there was no one else who combined all these talents so well in a single personality and made them all so significantly relevant to her society.

The choices for this Award have thus really brought into focus a new holistic, all-inclusive, and integrative worldview that is essentially an alternative to the Western view.

I express once more my love and gratitude to your courageous people, the first in Asia to cast off the colonial shackles, and to your land and waters, the first in Asia to be graced each day by the sun’s hope-giving, healing rays.

I accept your honor with deep humility and happiness.

In the wake of a great political victory such as the one that toppled dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986, it is heroic to be in government. Buoyed by acclamation and euphoric hopes, many rally to the task. But it is different when the cheering stops and when many old problems seem intractable after all. In the Philippines, as personal ambition, disillusion, and the frustrations of day-to-day problem solving took their toll of the original crusaders, ALFREDO R. A. BENGZON stayed the course.

Son of a distinguished jurist, BENGZON studied at Ateneo de Manila and earned his medical degree at the University of the Philippines in 1961. Years of specialized training abroad followed. Returning to Manila in 1967, he established a practice in neurology and became a pioneer in medical services management.

Martial law made him a political man. In 1983 he quietly joined others to ponder how government could be recaptured for the people. Later he became part of the brain trust guiding Corazon Aquino’s rise to power. After the EDSA Revolution he joined her cabinet.

As secretary of health, BENGZON headed the Philippines’ third largest government department. Using his well-honed management skills he launched a thorough reorganization, weeding out corrupt holdovers from the old regime to make way for honest talents from the ranks. By ending institutionalized overpricing of medical supplies sold to his department by favored providers, he saved millions for essential operations. Meanwhile he emphasized public education— noting that it costs less to prevent a disease than to cure one—and mobilized support to make health a national priority.

“In the health sector,” he said, “public welfare must have primacy over private interests.” He therefore introduced his country’s first generic drug law, giving Filipinos an alternative to costly brand-name medicines. The counterattack by pharmaceutical companies and their allies in the medical profession was angry and often personal. BENGZON stood his ground, following his own advice that, in government service, “one must always be willing to pay the price.”

In a country where population has more than tripled since independence, BENGZON committed the government to placing both the knowledge and the means for rational family planning in the hands of all Filipinos. Such a stand aroused opposition within the powerful Roman Catholic Church. But BENGZON insists his program meet compelling public health needs and that conscience alone should guide individuals in such intimate family matters.

Known for his acumen and discretion, BENGZON was tasked by the president to guide sensitive negotiations between the government and its armed opponents as head of the Peace Commission. He was also a key figure in formulating the Philippine position in critical military base negotiations with the United States.

As a social reformer determined to place the government squarely on the side of the disadvantaged, BENGZON is persevering, pragmatic, and unfailingly positive. “Government is not merely a necessary evil,” he points out, “it is the key to our life as a nation.”

In electing ALFREDO R. A. BENGZON to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his courageous demonstration that urgent social goals, however strongly opposed, can be achieved through the machinery of democratic government.

My family and I are deeply moved by the foundation’s gesture of honor to me. In honoring me, you honor our president and her government, and you affirm that the government’s authority and power are the shield and sword of our people, instruments for liberation from the bondage of societal inequity.

You also honor the men and women of the Department of Health and the Peace Commission, whose intelligence and hard work, professional skills and personal savvy, unyielding courage and unintimidated perseverance serve as the cutting edge of social reforms. And you honor the Filipino people who deserve nothing less than our very best.

This award is a celebration of the essence of Ramon Magsaysay, his common sense and uncommon passion, his authority and the power of his office—all of which he used in the service of our people so that “those who have less in life may have more in law.”

Ours is a world and nation in rapid transition. Never have things changed more quickly than they do now. Never have we been more uncertain and confused. Never have we been in greater need of anchors to hold onto.

For Ramon Magsaysay that anchor was service to the people. To that I would now suggest that our nation requires service from the people. Too long we have forgotten that only a people who serve, deserve to be served.

In this light, two new qualifications are added to the call for a Ramon Magsaysay for our times. The first is: what are we doing to get the Magsaysay we need? The second is: the Magsaysay we seek must not just make government serve us; he must move us to serve one another.

Enunciating this call for service to the people and for service from the people, and with great pride and even greater humility, I accept this award.

During their remarkable dash to prosperity, Taiwanese have learned that rapid economic development can exact a costly social price. In their giddy race to accumulate and spend, once cherished-traditions governing family and social life seem to lose their importance; the newly affluent grow callous and indifferent to those left behind or waylaid by disease or calamity. Yet, by reminding Taiwanese of their Buddhist roots, Shih (Master) CHENG YEN has stirred the public conscience and tapped a powerful force for good.

Touched by tragedy as a youth, CHENG YEN came early to spiritual awareness. More than once she tried to flee her mother’s home in Taichung to seek the religious life. Finally, striking out for Taiwan’s remote east coast at the age of twenty-three, she succeeded. In the harbor city of Hualien, she became a nun and immersed herself in Buddhist meditation and good works. In 1966, with five other women, she founded the Tz’u Chi Buddhist Contribution Society.

Supporting themselves by sewing baby clothes and surviving on meager portions of tofu (bean curd) and rice, CHENG YEN and her followers encouraged housewives to save their small change for charity and directed their donations to the city’s poor. A simple temple complex built a few years later, on land given by CHENG YEN’s mother, became the group’s permanent home. In time, their selfless example and CHENG YEN’s impassioned exhortation to follow Buddhist teachings inspired others to give, and the Society flourished.

Toiling daily among Hualien’s have-nots, CHENG YEN was struck by the link between sickness and poverty. Illness of a breadwinner could quickly reduce a family to penury, yet Hualien’s rudimentary hospitals refused to treat anyone who could not pay. Moreover, Taipei’s advanced hospitals were too far away for the timely treatment of complex cases. In 1979 CHENG YEN resolved to build a modern hospital for Hualien. By then, membership in the Tz’u Chi Society had expanded to tens of thousands; the hospital fund grew rapidly.

Opened in 1986, the Tz’u Chi Buddhist General Hospital is staffed by some of Taiwan’s best-trained doctors and is fitted with state-of-the-art equipment. At CHENG YEN’s gentle urging, its patients are treated lovingly as family. The hospital refuses no one; those who cannot afford its fees are readily assisted by the Society.

Today, CHENG YEN and her twenty-six disciples—who support themselves by candlemaking—follow an austere regimen of work and meditation. They take nothing from the Society. Every penny contributed to the latter is meticulously acknowledged and goes directly to support the organization’s projects, making it Taiwan’s most trusted charity. Indeed, well over a million people have now joined the Society and in 1990 alone they contributed some U.S.$22 million. Such funds have enabled CHENG YEN to add 250 rooms to the hospital and assist more than ten thousand needy families and disaster victims each year. (When calamity strikes, her volunteers are often the first ones on the scene.) Recently she opened a nursing school where poor girls can learn a worthy calling. She now plans to build a full-fledged university in Hualien, plus a center of Buddhist culture. Through local branches of the Tz’u Chi Buddhist General Hospital, CHENG YEN hopes eventually to bring modern hospital services to people throughout Taiwan. At the heart of CHENG YEN’s burgeoning social service empire is the simple message of love and care for fellow human beings. She urges donors to give not just money but time—time ministering directly to the poor and sick. Following her example, Taiwanese of all stations, and numbering in the thousands, now do.

Unfazed by her growing celebrity, the frail but the tireless fifty-four-year-old CHENG YEN says simply, “I am led by the power of religion, which is immeasurable.”

In electing Shih CHENG YEN to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes her reawakening Taiwan’s modern people to the ancient Buddhist teachings of compassion and charity.

This is the most honored occasion in my life. Unfortunately, I am unable to witness personally the magnificence of this awards presentation and to extend my sincere gratitude to all who have shown their love and kindness to me. However, even though I am in Taiwan, I can feel the care and concern extended to me by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation and the encouragement given to me by all the distinguished guests at this awards ceremony. Your support and well wishes make me more aware of my responsibilities.

The ancient sages and worthy monks of China have said that no great event under heaven can be achieved by a single person alone in a single moment; instead, it is accomplished by collective efforts—from one person to another, from one generation to the next. The achievements that have resulted from the twenty-seven years of work of the Tz’u Chi (Compassion and Mercy) Buddhist Contribution Society must be directly attributed to all the Buddhist disciples, the Tz’u Chi committee and members, as well as all the kind-hearted lay people of our Society. Although this award is presented to me today, the actual honor and glory should belong to each member of the Tz’u Chi Buddhist Contribution Society.

Caring for others and providing relief to the poor and the sick symbolize the radiance of humanity and illumine man’s benevolent nature. This nature is evidenced in our daily life when we see many successful people among us who are unhesitatingly helping others. It is these people who are taking practical action to create tangible benefits to improve our society materially and spiritually, thus elevating the people’s quality of life. It is our hope that we can gather all goodhearted people to lead and guide our society—in a spirit of universal love—toward friendliness and harmony. In this way, we can purify our human nature by living in a land of “common wealth.” I believe everyone assembled here for this significant ceremony must share similar high aspirations with me.

I am very grateful to those who have given me this honor today. There are a lot of people who are suffering in this world and are in need of assistance. Therefore, I would like to donate half of the award stipend given me to the government of the Philippines for the victims of the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruptions. The other half will be given to the Tz’u Chi Buddhist Contribution Society for its relief purposes.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Magsaysay Foundation for the award given me, which symbolizes the highest honor for a social worker. The Philippines is a beautiful country, and her people are friendly and sincere. Regretfully, I am unable to visit this beautiful land due to personal reasons. However, as the Chinese saying goes, “Good friends feel close together even though they are actually far apart.” And opportunities for us to meet will certainly arise. 

Peace and good  health to everyone, and prosperity to the great Filipino nation.

The mandate of the serious press is daunting under the best of circumstances. But it is even more difficult where, as in much of Asia, populations are linguistically diverse, far-flung, and largely poor; where governments do not always welcome or protect the free flow of news; and where resources for production, fair pay, and training are slim—factors that tempt publishers to rely on brisk-selling sensationalism or links to special interests to pay the bills. Eager to surmount these impediments, Asian editors and publishers meeting in Manila in 1967 took a stand for professionalism in the regional press. Vowing jointly to make journalism a positive influence in the political and economic maturation of their societies, they founded the PRESS FOUNDATION OF ASIA.

At the heart of their endeavor was a realization that newspapers and the related media must rise above narrow preoccupations with individual countries and their politics and seek to educate readers about the vast social and economic changes sweeping Asia. Under the leadership of Amitabha Chowdhury of India and Tarzie Vittachi of Sri Lanka, the FOUNDATION, or PFA, introduced “development journalism” and directed regional journalists to issues like population, health, technology, and the environment. They also dared look to the day when the Asian press itself, not powerful Western news agencies, would speak to the rest of the world for Asia.

Since that time, more than two thousand Asian journalists have been trained in PFA-led workshops and seminars. Taking up the full range of development topics, these training exercises have helped young Asian journalists become literate reporters on matters such as agriculture, ecology, and medicine and taught them skills in photojournalism, high-tech printing, and cost-effective management.

In a related endeavor, the FOUNDATION launched Depthnews, a regionwide, development-oriented news service. Depth news was the first exclusively Asian news and features service and, in volume and range, remains unique today. Its forty-five correspondents generate stories used by some three hundred regional newspapers and some seven hundred-radio stations in twenty languages. More than two million people read Depthnews stories annually in their local newspapers. More than fifty million hear them over the radio. These days specialized Depthnews series take up the subjects of science, economics, and women. In the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh, there are national series as well. Although commercial success has eluded Depthnews, its reputation for excellence and breadth in regional reporting has made it a model the world around.

Some five hundred leading newspapers and broadcasting networks in Asia and the Pacific are now joined in PFA’s membership. Moreover, separate national press institutes have risen in several countries in response to its example and active support. With a staff of twenty in Manila, guided by Romeo Abundo and under the direction of its longtime Director General Mochtar Lubis, the PFA today—though often strapped for money—steadfastly advances its essential programs and causes.

From the beginning, press freedom has been chief among these causes. Lamentably, publishing the truth remains a dangerous occupation in parts of Asia today. This is why, in 1987, the FOUNDATION once again pledged to raise its voice against governments that arrest journalists and shut down newspapers arbitrarily. It is not enough for the press to perform well and to prosper, says its credo. It must do so “while staying honorable.”

In electing the PRESS FOUNDATION OF ASIA to receive the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes its guiding Asia’s press to look beyond national borders and speak intelligently to complex issues of regional change and development.

It is with a deep sense of gratitude and fulfillment that we accept the 1991 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding.

The selection of the PRESS FOUNDATION OF ASIA for this prestigious award is an honor that we at the PFA will cherish for a long time to come.

However, that honor is not ours alone. It is that of the many institutions and individuals who have consistently helped us to carry out programs aimed at giving the Asian press a sense of professional purpose and responsibility appropriate to the needs of Asia and the changes taking place in Asian societies.

The award, in a larger sense, is a recognition of the twenty-four-year effort of the PFA to make the Asian press more aware of the need to look beyond national borders and address the complex issues of regional change and development.

Our sense of fulfillment derives from this recognition and from the fact that a growing number of Asian newspapers now devote more space to what the PFA founders had long perceived to be the most significant of features: the development story.

This award gives us all the more reason to pursue our ultimate objective. And that is to make the Asian press live, perform, and prosper in a growing region while remaining honorable.