Where music is concerned, no fine line can be drawn to separate Sri Lanka from India and the rest of the world. In fact, through the ages, all of Sri Lanka’s fine arts evolved as part of the Greater Indian Tradition. In modern times new art forms came from the West, so that Portuguese lullabies and Christian hymns joined North Indian ragas and Buddhist chants as part of the island’s musical heritage. All the while, Sri Lanka’s village folk created songs and dances reflecting their own more isolated lives. 

So what, exactly, is Sri Lankan music? This question began to matter in 1948 when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, emerged as an independent nation. Happily, this is about the time that W.D. AMARADEVA began his musical career. For many Sri Lankans, he has provided the answer. 

Born Albert Perrera, AMARADEVA came early to music. His father, a carpenter, played the violin. By the age of seven, young Albert was playing the violin too. He quickly mastered the Bengali tunes then in vogue and from his older brother learned the rudiments of the classical North Indian raga. A prodigy, he became a star at local recitals and gained early renown as a singer of Buddhist devotional songs. By thirteen, he was performing on the radio. By nineteen, he was playing the violin, singing, and composing incidental music for the film “Asokamala.” Little wonder that he left school to pursue a life of music. 

Finding work at Radio Ceylon, Perrera emerged as a brilliant innovator in Sinhalese music and was soon welcomed into the company of leading artists and intellectuals. Sensing the young man’s genius, some of them raised a fund to send him to India for classical training. At the Bhathkande Institute of Music in Lucknow, Perrera sat at the feet of India’s music masters and won first prize in an all-India violin competition. He returned to Sri Lanka in 1958 as AMARADEVA, the name he would make famous. 

Issues of national identity now preoccupied many Sri Lankans. In the spirit of the times, AMARADEVA began arranging and performing indigenous folk songs, embellishing them with Indian ragas and thus elevating them from simple tunes to more sophisticated compositions. In other innovations, he experimented with Western harmony and counterpoint and with South Indian and Tamil musical forms. With lyricist Mahagama Sekera, he explored ways to wed the cadences of classical Sinhalese poetry to the new music. In time, AMARADEVA’s music came to reflect an entire spectrum of borrowed and indigenous influences, a uniquely Sri Lankan synthesis. 

A prodigious creative artist, AMARADEVA has composed music for ballet, film, the stage, and countless radio and television programs. He has written over one thousand songs-melodious, lyrical, haunting songs of patriotism, beauty, faith, passion, and love. For over fifty years now he has also been performing his songs over radio and television, in concert, and on gramophone records, audiotapes, and CDs. AMARADEVA?s fluid, resonant voice long ago overshadowed his violin. Today, Sri Lankans need only turn on their radios to hear it daily. “He sings so beautifully,” says one admirer, “one has to stop everything and listen.”

“Music”, says Pandith AMARADEVA, “is the finest of the fine arts.” His music is both very fine and widely loved. Sri Lankans say it is music that transcends ethnicity, class, and age. Or as his friend Ediriweera Sarachchandra put it, it is music that “speaks to the soul of the nation.” 

In electing W.D. AMARADEVA to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes his life of dazzling creativity in expression of the rich heritage and protean vitality of Sri Lankan music.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen, Mabuhay! 

I am deeply honoured as a Sri Lankan to be conferred the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award tonight — an award which in turn, honors the name of one of the most outstanding statesmen of Asia, a humanistic leader and a staunch champion of liberty of whose services the world was tragically deprived 44 years ago. 

I still have pleasant memories of my first visit to Manila way back in 1966 to attend the International Music Symposium. 

The last recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award from my country was Prof. Ediriwira Sarachchandra, the father of modern Sri Lankan drama, with whom I was privileged to enjoy a fruitful partnership of over four decades until his demise five years ago. I collaborated with him in his musical plays and it was indeed a rich and rewarding experience. 

If Dr. Sarachchandra’s pioneering role was to adapt the traditional drama to the modern stage, I in my own humble way have sought to undertake a similar task for my country’s music. 

What I have tried to do is to blend the North Indian classical tradition which is inseparable from the great tradition in our part of the world, with the folk music of Sri Lanka to make of it what I hope is a distinctive idiom of music. While recognizing this great tradition, I have also been fully exposed to other influences, both occidental and oriental, believing with Mahatma Gandhi that, I quote — “I want cultures of all lands to blow into my house as freely as possible but I refuse to be blown off my feet”, unquote. 

Critics have been kind enough to say that I have been able to create a national idiom of music without merely theorizing on the need for one. What, then, has been my approach to music? 

Basically, what I have tried to do is to build on the work of masters both in India and Sri Lanka while not adhering slavishly to either the classical tradition or the folk tradition. 

My life’s mission has been to refine this folk tradition and synthesize it with the Indian classical tradition, which I consider to be part of our heritage, without diluting its quality but adding a new dimension to it. 

I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this honor conferred on me personally and on Sri Lanka in general, and hope that this will be a source of inspiration to my country’s new generation. 

Maraming Salamat!

Violence against women knows no one place or social condition, alas. But it flourishes in times of upheaval and great social change, as in Cambodia during its long painful recovery from war and holocaust. OUNG CHANTHOL, executive director of the Cambodian Women?s Crisis Center (CWCC), wants to make her country a safer place for women. 

Born in Kampot, Cambodia in 1967, OUNG lost her father to the Khmer Rouge and spent many years of her youth in a Thai refugee camp. There she studied law and public administration and led a job-training program for widows. Returning home in 1992 under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), she worked as an interpreter and joined a human rights task force. Here she became acquainted with the magnitude of sex trafficking and other gender-related crimes in Cambodia. Following a period of study at Columbia University and an assignment with the Cambodia office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, she decided to act. With the support of friends and of Terre des Hommes (Germany and the Netherlands) she founded CWCC in 1997. 

Prostitution has a long history in Cambodia. But it rose dramatically during the UNTAC transition and afterwards. By 1994, in Phnom Penh alone, some 17,000 women and girls were involved, most of them sold or tricked into prostitution and kept in virtual servitude. Thousands more were being trafficked to Thailand to be prostitutes, maids, and beggars. Profits from this cruel trade were shared by traffickers and brothel owners and by the goons, police, and politicians who protected them. For the women, there was no recourse. 

It was the same for victims of rape and domestic violence, crimes the Cambodian police barely acknowledged and acted upon capriciously, if at all. Many women endured such an assault fatalistically, fearing they had somehow brought it upon themselves-a view Cambodian society tended to uphold. 

OUNG moved her new organization into action quickly. CWCC set up confidential shelters for women rescued from brothels and abusive husbands. It gave legal assistance to victims of rape, trafficking, and domestic abuse and helped them understand their rights. It investigated cases of gender violence of all kinds and prodded the police to intervene and make arrests. It provided medical care and counseling, giving comfort to hundreds of women who, before CWCC, had no one to talk to about their fear, shame, and depression. And it trained women in literacy, health, and livelihood skills and helped them find jobs. Thousands of women have now received such assistance from CWCC. 

By painstakingly documenting hundreds of cases of rape, trafficking, and domestic abuse, OUNG has learned that these crimes are abetted by pervasive ignorance. CWCC therefore mounts awareness campaigns to tell people that sex trafficking is illegal and should be deterred. It educates local authorities and the police. It broadcasts effective radio and TV messages and provides authoritative data to journalists; OUNG herself speaks bluntly to the media. With its partners in Cambodia’s growing civil society, it is carrying the dialogue about women?s rights to the highest levels of government. 

At CWCC, the future is charted at meetings where OUNG and her twenty-five staff members analyze problems and brainstorm about solutions. There are many problems. In Cambodia, old habits die hard and the wheels of justice grind slowly. Moreover, CWCC’s work is inherently dangerous, provoking the wrath of brothel owners, angry husbands, police, and politicians. 

OUNG and her colleagues are accustomed to this. Soft-spoken but passionate, thirty-four-year-old Oung shrugs off the dangers and, when frustration mounts, gathers her staff to talk things through. And the work goes on. 

In electing OUNG CHANTHOL to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her rising courageously to confront and eliminate sex trafficking and gender violence in Cambodia.

Your Excellency President Gloria M. Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen: 

Granting an award to me tonight as the second awardee from Cambodia is a great honor and pleasure for me, my family; my colleagues at CWCC; funding agencies, media, partner NGOs, Cambodian people; and government. 

I would like therefore to express my deepest thanks to the trustees and staff for working very hard in selecting me to receive the Award for Emergent Leadership. It confirms that our mission of eliminating violence against women is right and should be pursued. It has been very inspiring for me to see not only CWCC grow, but also get more young people involved, stay involved and work harder for the best interests of women and children who are the most vulnerable groups. I am sure that the recognition will facilitate my work in this very hard struggle. 

In 1997, my friends and I, with the support of TDH, decided to establish the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC) in response to the outcry of hundreds of thousands of women and children who were victims of sex trafficking, rape and domestic violence. Communities were ignoring their cries for help because they could not access services such as safe shelter, therapy, social services, legal remedies and justice. Our mission is to empower women and children victims to help themselves, and to mobilize communities and government officials in responding and eliminating violence against women to achieve safety, equality, peace, development and happiness for all. 

After many years of great effort in empowering victims, villagers, police officers, local authorities, and the court; gradually become our allies in assisting victims and preventing issues and start to cope with the problem by themselves. An office and hot line for helping the victims have been set up for them and the same programs are duplicated by other NGOs and a few ministries. The lawyers, who traditionally represented only the accused, agreed to assist the victims. Newspapers, TV, and radio now are actively and successfully working together in disseminating information to the public and policy and lawmakers. The media and newspapers come to us for information, unlike in the beginning when CWCC staff approached them. It is common to see CWCC’s work reported in the media. 

Last year, the Ministry of Social Affairs, Labor, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation presented two Certificates of Appreciation to CWCC for its outstanding work. 

Despite all our success, what we have achieved is still very small compared to the seriousness of violence against women in Cambodia, which needs continuous and integrated interventions and gender-based sensitivity to change public attitude and behavior. 

Breaking ground in the fight against violence against women is lengthy and dangerous. We have encountered so many obstacles including resistance from unreasonable conservative communities, threats from abusers, and the frustration in the failure of the legal system in providing justice to victims. We are also daily witnesses and listeners to abuse against women and children. 

On a personal note, as a young female leader I have to overcome other problems such as seniority and negative reactions to feminism. I face challenges in choosing appropriate and responsive strategies, selecting the right gender-sensitive staff, enabling them to become more professional, and keeping them from burning out. But the suffering of victims is the motivating factor for us to continue this difficult mission. 

I have also learned a lot from this work. First, everything can be changed for the better. But it needs time, persistence, accurate information, and proper planning with input from the victims and all the stakeholders. Second, empowering people to deal with problems by themselves needs to be effective and efficient. I am sure that no one wants violence against their daughters, sisters and mothers if they are aware that it is violence and it is unjust. Culturally, we have been taught that violence against women is an acceptable act and a private matter. We therefore need to educate people and empower them to collectively respond to the issue by themselves. Third, a leader in this kind of work must be dedicated. If the leader is uncommitted and afraid, the staff will be the same, but if the leader is committed and brave, the staff will follow suit. Then, everything is possible. Fourth, coordination and networking is necessary for success and the leader must constantly build her own capacity through formal and informal education to gain strength and confidence from people and institutions they work with. 

SI believe that a society can be peaceful and prosperous only when men, women and children hold hands together with equal dignity and respect. These can be attained only with participation and support from all sectors, not only from women?s groups, including civil society, government, NGOs, men and women. 

To conclude, I am very encouraged by your recognition. CWCC would not be as successful as today without the help of our supporters. I hope the support is continued. THANK YOU!

Even in the best of times, it is arid in the Alwar district of Rajasthan, India. Yet not so long ago, streams and rivers in Alwar’s forest-covered foothills watered its villages and farms dependably and created there a generous if fragile human habitat. People lived prudently within this habitat, capturing precious monsoon rainwater in small earthen reservoirs called johads and revering the forest, from which they took sparingly. 

The twentieth century opened Alwar to miners and loggers who decimated its forests and damaged its watershed. Its streams and rivers dried up, then its farms. Dangerous floods now accompanied the monsoon rains. Overwhelmed by these calamities, villagers abandoned their johads. As men shifted to the cities for work, women spirited frail crops from dry ground and walked several kilometers a day to find water. Thus was Alwar when RAJENDRA SINGH first arrived in 1985. 

That was the year twenty-eight-year-old SINGH left his job in Jaipur and committed himself to rural development. With four companions from the small organization he led, Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS, Young India Association), he boarded a bus and traveled to a desolate village at the end of the line. Upon advice of a local sage, he began organizing villagers to repair and deepen old johads. 

When the refurbished ponds filled high with water after the monsoon rains, villagers were joyous and SINGH realized that the derelict johads offered a key to restoring Alwar’s degraded habitat. Once repaired, they not only stored precious rainwater but also replenished moisture in the soil and recharged village wells and streams. Moreover, villagers could make johads themselves using local skills and traditional technology. 

As TBS went to work, SINGH recruited a small staff of social workers and hundreds of volunteers. Expanding village by village — to 750 villages today — he and his team helped people identify their water-harvesting needs and assisted them with projects, but only when the entire village committed itself and pledged to meet half the costs. Aside from johads, TBS helped villagers repair wells and other old structures and mobilized them to plant trees on the hillsides to prevent erosion and restore the watershed. SINGH coordinated all these activities to mesh with the villagers’ traditional cycle of rituals. Meanwhile, with others, TBS waged a long and ultimately successful campaign to persuade India?s Supreme Court to close hundreds of mines and quarries that were despoiling Sariska National Park. 

Guided by Gandhi’s teachings of local autonomy and self-reliance, SINGH has introduced community-led institutions to each village. The Gram Sabha manages water conservation structures and sets the rules for livestock grazing and forest use. The Mahila Mandal organizes the local women’s savings and credit society. And the River Parliament, representing ninety villages, determines the allocation and price of water along the Arvari River. 

Now, 4,500 working johads dot Alwar and ten adjacent districts. Fed by a protected watershed and the revitalizing impact of the village reservoirs, five once-dormant rivers now flow year round. Land under cultivation has grown by five times and farm incomes are rising. For work, men no longer need to leave home. And for water, these days women need walk no farther than the village well. 

RAJENDRA SINGH is TBS’s charismatic motivator. Villagers call him Bai Sahab, Elder Brother, and listen to his every word. People have become greedy, he tells them. They should learn again to be grateful to nature. That is why, he says, in Alwar, “the first thing we do in the morning is touch the earth with reverence.”

In electing RAJENDRA SINGH to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his leading Rajasthani villagers in the steps of their ancestors to rehabilitate their degraded habitat and bring its dormant rivers back to life.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, brothers and sisters, distinguished guests. 

It is with great humility that I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. This Award really belongs to those communities in Rajasthan in northern India, who have worked against tremendous odds to bring life back to their lands. They share this achievement with the men and women of the Tarun Bharat Sangh who have shown courage and determination. 

Some 16 years ago when I arrived in Bheekampura village in Alwar District, we found that lack of water was driving young people away from theirhomes. Forced to abandon their families and the village, people had lost hope of seeing better days. The government had declared Alwar a ?dark? zone, meaning an area suffering from severe water shortage. 

However, the elders in the villages still had among them the wisdom of their ancestors. Working side by side with TBS, they built traditional earthen dams known as johads. These small-scale, low-cost structures do not look like very much but taken together in hundreds and thousands, they have changed the face of this part of India. With water has come productivity, more income, a sense of community and a real feeling of self-reliance. 

In 1996, we were amazed to find Arvari River flowing even at the peak of summer. We had been building water harvesting structures in the catchment area of Arvari over the years without realizing that we were in fact recharging the river through underground percolation. Since then 4 more rivers have become perennial. 

With the arrival of water, problems of sharing arose. As a result Arvari Sansad (or River Parliament) came into existence representing 72 villages. This Parliament meets four times a year. 

On another front, TBS had to wage a difficult battle against powerful marble mine owners who were destroying the ecology of the Sariska Tiger Sanctuary. Being located in the periphery of this Sanctuary, we filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India. While the case was on, I and my colleagues had to face continuous harassment and character assassination. The Supreme Court in its judgment vindicated our stand and over 450 marble mines were closed down in 1992. 

I may mention that Mahatma Gandhi has a special place in my perception and ideas. He wanted every village to be self-reliant. Our efforts culminating in this Award are a small tribute to Mahatma’s vision and thinking. 

Since being named a Ramon Magsaysay laureate, I have told my brothers and sisters back in India that this Award is a recognition of their untiring efforts. I have told them that the decision-making process leading to the building of johads can be replicated in other parts of India and in Asian countries where communities face similar challenges. 

This Award will inspire communities of Alwar and other parts of Rajasthan where we work. 

On their behalf, I am proud to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

Rice is Asia’s staple food, the delicious grain upon which its civilizations have grown and flourished since earliest times. Over centuries, Asia’s farmers toiled to render forests into rice fields and tinkered endlessly to garner from each paddy and stalk just a little more rice. Rising populations in modern times have meant that more rice must be grown on less land, especially in China where people now number over a billion. YUAN LONGPIN, director general of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center, has confronted this urgent need. His brilliant innovations in hybridization offer hope that, in the years to come, there will always be enough rice. 

As a boy during the Japanese War, YUAN followed his father across China to Chongqing, attending one school after another. An eager learner, he earned the nickname “Questioning student.” A visit to a horticultural garden awakened in him a love for plants. He studied agriculture in college and, as a young teacher at Anjiang School of Agriculture in Hunan, began his own experiments in crop breeding. Shocked by China’s great famine of 1958-1961 and by the impoverished life of rural villagers, YUAN devoted himself to developing higher-yielding rice plants. Thwarted by flawed Soviet theories and by the Cultural Revolution, he persisted despite disappointments and risks. Quietly shifting to sounder genetic models, he began to succeed. 

Hybridization held the key to unleashing the power of heterosis-the dramatic growth spurt that follows the crossing of genetically distant parent plants. Yet hybridization on a large scale seemed beyond the reach of plant scientists. By the early 1960s, many had abandoned the search. YUAN carried on, publishing a key scientific paper in 1966. The discovery of a naturally sterile male wild-rice variety in 1970 led to a breakthrough. With the robust support of the Chinese government, YUAN now led a nationwide team of researchers to develop in 1974 the “three-line hybridization system,” capable of producing high-yield hybrid seeds on a commercial scale. Able to yield 15-20 percent more rice per hectare than the best non-hybrid varieties of the time, YUAN’s new seeds spread rapidly in China. 

As a consequence, China’s rice production rose by 47.5 percent by the 1990s, even as some five million hectares of erstwhile paddy land was shifted to cash crops such as vegetables, fruits, cotton, and rapeseed. Meanwhile, at his research center in Changsha, YUAN raced to simplify and improve his technique, achieving a higher-yielding two-line system in 1996. Today, half of China’s rice land is planted to YUAN’s hybrids. At the same time, the business of hybrid seed production is raising incomes across the countryside. 

These days YUAN is perfecting what he calls super-hybrid rice, to yield 25-30 percent more than current hybrids. “If this materializes,” he says, “we can feed 100 million more people.”

YUAN’s research center has already trained 350 scientists from twenty-five countries. His hybrid rice technology is raising hopes for food self-sufficiency in Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and other Asian countries. All of this delights YUAN, who says, “One of my dreams is to make hybrid rice help more people in the world.” 

Lean and wiry at seventy years and still hard at work, Yuan is a man of simple ways who rides a motorcycle to the fields daily and dresses like a farmer. He has enriched the lives of millions of Chinese villagers, who revere him and call him the Father of Rice. YUAN returns the compliment. “The peasants in our country have a very rich experience in how to grow rice,” he says. “I have a lot to learn from them.” 

In electing YUAN LONGPIN to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes the unique contribution of his research in rice hybridization to food security in Asia.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay Family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen: 

It is my great honor and pleasure to attend this glorious ceremony to accept the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. 

First, I would like to express my hearty thanks to the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for recognizing the important role of hybrid rice in raising food yield and for setting a high value on my work in this research field. 

The success in the development of hybrid rice is a major breakthrough in rice breeding, providing an effective approach to increase rice yield by a big margin. In recent years, about 16 million hectares of paddy field are cultivated with hybrid rice each year in China. The average yield of hybrid rice is 7 tons per hectare which outyields the conventional pure line varieties by more than 1.5 tons per hectare. 

Our experiences showed that expansion of hybrid rice area is a most efficient and economic way to increase grain yield. At present, there are some 150 million hectares of rice in the world and the average yield is only 3 tons per hectare. According to FAO’S data, the acreage under hybrid rice in 1990 was 10% of the world’s rice area, but it produced 20% of total rice production. From this we can roughly calculate that if conventional rice were completely replaced by hybrid rice, total rice production in the world would be doubled, and this could meet one billion more people’s food requirements. Therefore, speeding up the development of hybrid rice in the world will be helpful to solve the starvation problems facing mankind. 

There is no national boundary in science. Hybrid rice technology belongs not only to China but also to the whole world. For the welfare of people all over the world, I will continue to do my best to promote the development of hybrid rice in and outside China, especially in developing countries. Let hybrid rice make greater contributions to the whole world. 

Thank you.

Under the dictator Suharto and his New Order, politics in Indonesia was a matter for the rulers, not for common folk and workers. The basic freedoms of speech and assembly were luxuries the young nation could not afford, the government said; for economic development there must be order. The ideal citizen deferred respectfully to the state. Meekness was a national virtue. DITA INDAH SARI did not fit in. 

Born in 1972, DITA SARI grew up in Medan and Jakarta. In 1991, she entered law school at the University of Indonesia. There she met politicized students affiliated with the underground democracy movement. They introduced her to the realities of life for Indonesia’s working poor, especially those who labored in the country’s burgeoning manufacturing sector. Low wages and pliant workers were keys to attracting foreign investment. Independent labor unions were prohibited and the government freely employed the army and police to keep restless laborers in check. Living with workers in an industrial slum, DITA learned firsthand just how difficult life could be on the country’s paltry minimum wage, or the even smaller sums many workers were actually paid. She abandoned law school and became an underground labor organizer. 

It was a period of great ferment. All across the Indonesian industrial belt, workers were breaking out in spontaneous strikes for better pay and working conditions. There were more than one thousand such strikes in 1994 alone. With her allies in the Indonesian Center for Labor Struggle (PPBI), DITA now led strikes and demonstrations herself and helped frustrated workers translate their grievances into politically meaningful action. In 1996 she joined in founding the People’s Democratic Union (later the People’s Democratic Party, PRD), dedicated to a progressive, democratic alternative for Indonesia. 

All of this was illegal and dangerous. Time and again, DITA was detained and beaten. After leading a massive labor action in Surabaya in July 1996, she was arrested on charges of subversion and sentenced to five years in prison. “The regime made a big mistake by putting us in jail,” she says, speaking of herself and other activists. “We were like lions, sharpening our claws. Getting ready.” 

By the time DITA was released in 1999, Suharto and the New Order had been swept away. Political parties now proliferated in Indonesia’s new democratic space. So did labor unions. Today, there are thirty-two of them. DITA’s Indonesian National Front for Labor Struggle (FNPBI) represents workers in the health, textile, transport, metal, and wood industries. As she seeks common ground with other union leaders, DITA is also building alliances with workers at the grassroots and recruiting a new generation of organizers — conspicuously among women, who constitute 40 percent of Indonesia’s labor force. 

As FNPBI?s leader, DITA’s approach is militant but nonviolent. She is practical. Strikes often hurt workers, she knows, so compromise is better. But in her experience, many powerful people in Indonesia today remain hostile to labor unions. The armed forces still intrude in labor disputes. Sometimes, therefore, she insists, “We have no other choice but to fight.” 

Carrying her cause to Parliament, DITA lobbies for reforms in Indonesia’s labor laws and for the removal of army and police from the factory floor. Amid her country?s current economic and political crisis, she fears that workers will be left behind. Yet, Indonesia is a democracy now. And for workers, DITA believes, democracy — much more democracy — is what is needed. The realm of politics belongs to every citizen, she says, but Indonesia’s workers “are not yet awake politically.” Twenty-eight-year-old DITA hopes to awaken them. And, just possibly, to lead them. 

In electing DITA INDAH SARI to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her resolute activism on behalf of working people and their place in Indonesia’s evolving democracy.

Your Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, President of the Philippines, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

First, I would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation which has given me this award. Since this tradition began, I am the seventeenth person from Indonesia who has accepted this award. 

All the democratic and labor movements in Indonesia are happy too, because I dedicate this award to them with hopes for building the new way to break militarism, and defining the way for economic and political problem-solving for people in third world countries. 

This is a very prestigious award. I consider it not an award for myself but for generating international attention toward the role of labor and the democratic movement in creating change in Indonesia. This is not apart from every other obstacle I?ve been through. From living with laborers in rural areas, friends in the democratic struggle, and prisoners for three years, these things taught me a lot. 

Ironically, even if there was attention from the international community the labor movement does not have a proper place in Indonesia. Coinciding with democratic demand, democratic space started to open but it has not changed society’s point of view towards the working class. People consider the labor movement as a frightened, uneducated movement which only produces social unrest. 

This unrest is directed towards the conditions of workers which get worse day by day, exploited by international capitalism. International capitalists only give profits to multinational companies, with government support. 

Economic pressures and political changes have motivated the labor movement to move forward step by step. In the beginning people do not recognize alternative organizations but now they do. This condition convinces us that struggle is the right choice. 

Honorable audience, choosing Emergent Leadership for a new category is a proper thing. The youth holds the future in their hands. The essence of this category is to remind young people that they have a responsibility to liberate the people from poverty and injustice. Leadership is a process of maturity and should enable people to understand social problems in society. 

Political process in Indonesia in the last decade has created young leaders who have very good spirit and integrity. But they have not accepted opportunities to involve people in decision making. Until today, traditional leadership based on culture, religion and family background is still the dominant leadership in Asian countries. We know that it has weaknesses. But in the democratic movement against multinational corporations and international finance agencies, we have seen it has resulted to new blood for continuing the democratic struggle all over the world. That is the youth; this will be the blood for a new generation, and a new civilization without exploitation. For these reasons, we have to build it hand in hand. 

Emergent Leadership is relevant and brilliant; this is a way for the Ramon Magsaysay Award to bridge the sunset of traditional politics to the rising sun of the new leaders, and honor leaders of the future. The Ramon Magsaysay Award dares to challenge the old pattern of Asian leadership.

I myself have high hopes on this Ramon Magsaysay Award to us. I wish this award will motivate the youth to be leaders of the future, and we will see prosperity, justice, and new democratic order based on people’s participation. For all of us here, we have to give more opportunities for them to evaluate their work, create new approaches for democratic movements, based on prosperity and justice for all. This is the greatest accomplishment I can contribute to democratic movement and social freedom. 

Thank you.

For more than two thousand years, as WU QING reminds us, China was ruled by men, not laws, and women were subject to men. These are stubborn traditions. China’s communist revolution sought to eliminate feudalism and brought women the right to vote and be educated. Yet in the People’s Republic of China today, many women cannot exercise these rights and people still strive for the rule of law. Wu Qing, teacher and People’s Deputy, speaks out for the rule of law and is helping China’s women take their proper place in the national society-an equal place. 

The daughter of prominent intellectuals, WU came of age in the early years of the People’s Republic and studied English at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute, now a university. Graduating in 1960, she joined the school’s faculty and became a beloved professor in a career spanning forty years. In the late 1970s, she became famous as China’s TV English teacher on state television. 

A program in community leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led WU to activism. In 1984, she sought and won a seat in the Haidian District People’s Congress, to represent the university. The following year, she formed the Women’s Studies Forum, one of China’s first nongovernmental organizations. 

Through the Forum, WU began actively to address women’s issues in China. She traveled widely to promote gender awareness and women’s self-improvement and, in 1989, helped launch China’s first university course on feminism. With colleagues in Beijing, she set up a hotline to help women confront problems of family planning, childcare, sexual harassment, and divorce. In the countryside, she discovered the appalling plight of China’s poor rural women, who contribute 65 percent of the country’s labor yet who are often illiterate and subject to arranged marriages-a fate WU likens to sexual slavery. In 1999, WU helped establish a training center where rural women and out-of-school girls learn livelihood skills for economic independence; nearly eight hundred have attended. WU’s recent efforts focus on grassroots literacy, micro-credit, gender, and legal training projects. “After Professor Wu spoke in my village,” says one young woman, “I came to her school. She saved my life.” 

The women’s movement, WU stresses, is part of China’s democratic movement. This is why she urges women everywhere in China to become literate, to vote, and to stand for election. 

As a People’s Deputy herself, WU vowed not to be a rubber stamp. She studied the Constitution and discovered that deputies are powerful. Indeed, they are explicitly mandated to supervise the work of government officials. WU thus began asserting herself, insisting that China’s laws be honored and not casually overridden by the authorities. In her district, she took up a hundred small but urgent matters, from improving safety on campus to repairing the faculty bathrooms. WU met with her constituents weekly and, working without a salary or staff, meticulously recorded and acted upon their concerns. She still does, having been reelected four times and elected three times to the higher Beijing Municipal People’s Congress. In Haidian, when some long-ignored problem is suddenly put to right, people are apt to say, “Ah, Deputy WU is on the job.” 

Deputy WU is frankly outspoken and has occasionally challenged China’s senior authorities. But for the most part, she works at the grassroots. Her copy of the constitution is worn from constant use. After all, she says, “My power comes from the constitution.” But with a keen eye to the everyday ways of democracy, she also says, “I have to work for my constituents. Otherwise, why should they vote for me?” 

In electing WU QING to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes her path breaking advocacy on behalf of women and the rule of law in the People’s Republic of China.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen: 

I feel very honored to be an awardee of the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. In honoring me, you honor countless women and men who advocate and fight for gender equality, the rule of law, and the involvement of people at the grassroots level in making changes for a better China and a better world. 

My thanks go first to my deceased parents, who not only gave me life, but also instilled values in me — integrity, honesty, caring, and sharing. They were my first teachers, who taught me with their words and with their actions that China needs people who are willing to dedicate themselves to her and to the people. I learned from them that I am a human being first and a woman second; that as a woman I can have my own career and a family. They also taught me that as a social being, I should respect and share with others, reach out to help, and to make changes. 

Next, I say “Thank you” to women, especially rural women whom I have had the good fortune to know, serve, and learn from. Women in the remote areas in China have taught me of their valiant struggle to overcome poverty and deprivation. This has empowered me. I want to join forces with them to make the needed changes. Though many of them are illiterate, they know their priorities — equality, development, environmental protection, and peace. Without their advice, wisdom, and support, I would not be receiving this award. 

It is those courageous women who have helped me decide that placing women?s issues firmly on the Chinese agenda is a cause to which I will dedicate the rest of my life. 

All my constituents who have supported me for seventeen years also deserve my heartfelt thanks. My experience as a deputy has matured my capacity for participating in politics. Those constituents have helped me to learn about the Constitution, the system and functions of the People’s Congress, and the rights and responsibilities of an individual and a People’s Deputy. As China changes from a planned economy to a market economy, our understanding of democracy and the rule of law will grow. The people insist that their views be reflected by their deputies, and they demand accountability from us. I am especially encouraged by the amendment to Article 5 of the Constitution, the first paragraph of which provides: “The People’s Republic of China governs the country according to law and makes it a socialist country ruled by law,” which was adopted on March 15, 1999. 

I want to thank my husband, Chen Shu, who has come with me to receive this award, and our son, Chen Gang. Without their inspiration and help, I would not have had time to do this important work. 

And finally, I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for giving me the award. This recognition empowers and encourages me to work still harder for women and men in China. I hope it will do the same to all the Chinese people and people throughout the world. The mission is clear. 

It is equality, peace, democracy, and justice for all peoples.

The Silk Road once linked East Asia to Western Europe and hosted flourishing oases of high art and civilization all along its great length. Today, many remnants of its brilliant past lie in ruin. The same is true of countless other cultural artifacts around the world. Whose responsibility is it to care for these treasures? Professor IKUO HIRAYAMA believes that they are the inheritance of the entire world; the entire world, therefore, should join in caring for them. He is setting the example.

Born in 1930, HIRAYAMA was attending middle school in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb destroyed the city and killed many of his schoolmates and teachers. He went on to study Japanese painting at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) and joined the school’s faculty in 1952. Suffering badly from radiation sickness a few years later, HIRAYAMA endured a crisis that led to a spiritual awakening and recovery. He expressed his breakthrough in a painting depicting the seventh-century monk Xuanzang, bearing the message of Buddha across the Silk Road to China, from whence it reached Japan. HIRAYAMA’s interest in Buddhism’s origins and its path to Japan influenced his paintings for years to come and led him to explore the Silk Road for himself.

Year after year, he did so. All along the fabled route he encountered long-neglected Buddhist shrines and works of art. In Dunhuang, northwest China, he saw hundreds of cliff-side grottoes filled with ancient Buddha images and bright paintings-priceless antiquities that China lacked the resources to protect. HIRAYAMA pondered this. Each one of the Silk Road’s historic entrepots and pilgrimage sites had contributed to the passage of Buddhism to Japan. This insight led HIRAYAMA to persuade the Japanese government to underwrite and equip a groundbreaking research and restoration project at the Dunhuang Caves.

But there were so many sites like the Dunhuang Caves in Asia. Some of them, like the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, lay in countries beset by turbulence and without the means or will to protect them. What was needed, HIRAYAMA decided, was an international campaign to save cultural treasures wherever they existed. By this time, his paintings had brought him fame and wealth, and he was a professor (and later president) of a prestigious art school. HIRAYAMA now put these assets to use as an activist for cultural preservation.

He spearheaded international efforts to rehabilitate Angkor Wat in Cambodia and to safeguard the ancient Korguryo tomb frescoes of North Korea. He helped rescue Chinese artifacts from the Yangtze River flood of 1998 and, in the city of Nanjing, fostered Chinese-Japanese reconciliation by recruiting Japanese volunteers to help rebuild the ancient city ramparts. He funded French-led efforts to save war-threatened treasures in Afghanistan’s national museum and led an international appeal to the Taliban not to destroy the unique Bamiyan Buddhas. And much more.

HIRAYAMA channels his collaborative efforts through his own foundation and through governments, international organizations, and UNESCO, for whom he serves as a Goodwill Ambassador. Exhibitions of his paintings, in Japan and abroad, arouse public interest and generate funds for restoration projects. He has committed many millions of dollars personally.

HIRAYAMA believes that restoring works of art goes hand-in-hand with restoring human societies. Projects like those in Cambodia must always include training for members of the host community so that, in time, they can assume the restoration work themselves. This, he says, helps damaged societies to reestablish kinship with their own past and, in doing so, “restore their humanity.”

In electing IKUO HIRAYAMA to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his efforts to promote peace and international cooperation by fostering a common bond of stewardship for the world’s cultural treasures.

Your Excellency Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, President of the Philippines, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is indeed a great honor and privilege for me to have been selected as this year’s recipient of the world-renowned Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding.

First of all, I should like to express my heartfelt gratitude and deepest appreciation to the members of the Foundation and to all of you gathered here today. I should especially like to offer my warm congratulations to the other award honorees.

I was exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. At the time I was in my third year of junior high school. I miraculously escaped death, although I suffered for some time from the after effects of nuclear exposure. This experience — feeling firsthand the suffering and devastation caused by war — motivated me to create my artistic works in the pursuit of lasting peace.

In 1962, I was awarded a UNESCO Fellowship, which I used to study European Art. Later on, I had the pleasure of expressing my gratitude to UNESCO by providing 100 Hirayama Silk Road Fellowships for Young Scholars over a period of 10 years. As Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO, I also made humble efforts to safeguard the Angkor Monuments in Cambodia and the Dunhuang Grottoes in China. Currently, I am engaged in the preservation of artistic works of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and of the Koguryo Tombs’ mural paintings in D.P.R. Korea.

Through our shared efforts to preserve outstanding cultural properties for future generations and to strengthen cultural exchanges among the world’s people, I firmly believe that together we can promote a culture of peace and mutual understanding. To help achieve this goal, I have been advocating the “Red Cross Spirit for Cultural Heritage” and joint activities “to promote peace through culture.”

This highly prestigious Award encourages me to continue my work dedicated to the cause of peace.

In closing, let me express once again my profound sense of appreciation for having received this award. I should also like to express my great respect for the late President Magsaysay, in whose memory these awards were established. Finally, please allow me to wish further prosperity and wellbeing to all those gathered here today and to the people of the Philippines, under the capable leadership of your President.

Thank you very much.