Even in a freewheeling democracy like the Philippines, can a free press truly stand free? Despite the absence of censorship, many factors mitigate against it. Newspapers and other media outlets tailor the news to sell, and to advance the interests of their owners. Governments also seek to shape the news. So do politicians, tycoons, and the military. It is hard to stand free of such forces. Yet, SHEILA CORONEL believes the press must strive to do so. Philippine democracy needs an honest watchdog. As leader of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, she is strengthening her country’s Fourth Estate. 

Filipinos tend to agree that the press should be feisty and free. And so it was in the early decades of Philippine independence. CORONEL was only fourteen, however, when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and gagged the country’s press. She took up political science at the University of the Philippines and intended to study the law, as her father had done. But instead she began writing for Philippine Panorama magazine. And when, in 1983, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., cracked the edifice of Marcos?s power and the Philippine press stirred tentatively back to life, CORONEL says, “It became compelling to be a journalist.” She never looked back. 

In the mid-1980s, CORONEL covered the movement to bring Marcos down and emerged as one of the bright young chroniclers of the EDSA Revolution. Afterwards, she sealed her reputation at the Manila Chronicle with probing stories presented in flawless English. Her work appeared in the New York Times and The Guardian of England. Growing frustrated with the constraints of a conventional newsroom, in 1989 she and eight like-minded reporters founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). CORONEL became executive director only by default, she says. Even so, except for one year, she has led the Center ever since. 

Investigative journalism requires painstaking research. Reporters conduct extensive interviews and spend hours and days poring over government, bank, and court documents; business records; and electronic data bases. At the Center, CORONEL and her partners used techniques like these to develop in-depth stories of public interest and to probe subjects ordinarily held secret behind layers of power. They then marketed the stories through the mainstream press. Meanwhile, through fellowships and training programs, the Center mentored younger reporters in the tools of the trade. 

Finding its stride under CORONEL, PCIJ plumbed the state of the nation. It probed attempts by military power-grabbers and their political allies to overthrow President Corazon Aquino. It exposed the role of officials and politicians and military men in massive illegal logging operations. It examined the suffocating grip of political clans and bosses on Philippine towns and provinces. And it exposed shocking corruption in the Supreme Court, in the president’s cabinet, in government agencies, and in the country’s newsrooms. The Center spared no legitimate target and, year by year, it gained credibility. This became clear when PCIJ’s scrupulous reporting played a key role in scrutinizing the anomalies of Joseph Estrada’s presidency and helped set the stage for the president’s eventual impeachment and dramatic ouster. 

CORONEL, now forty-five, avoids publicity and applies herself tirelessly to the work of the Center. Today, hundreds of articles and many books and documentary films and PCIJ’s own magazine testify to the Center’s remarkable productivity and influence under her management. They also reflect her hopeful commitment to Philippine democracy. 

“We are not as cynical about our audience as many others are,” she says. “We believe in the power of an informed citizenry.” 

In electing SHEILA CORONEL to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes her leading a groundbreaking collaborative effort to develop investigative journalism as a critical component of democratic discourse in the Philippines.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen. 

The great Filipino film director Lino Brocka, who received this same award in 1985, once told me, “You cannot have the great Filipino movie unless you have the great Filipino audience.” 

The same, it must be said, is true of journalism. 

Twenty years ago, in August of 1983, I was a rookie reporter covering the aftermath of the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino. Ferdinand Marcos was then president and he held the media in a very tight grip. Even when millions of people were out in the streets in protest, we were not allowed to write about them. I covered the rallies in a car that had the name of my newspaper prominently painted on its doors. Several times, angry crowds surrounded our vehicle, and on one occasion, pelted it with stones. “Write the truth!” the protesters shouted at us. “Write what you see.” 

Those people out in the streets were our readers. And since then I have kept my faith in them. That incident and many others through the years have affirmed my belief in the wisdom of the great Filipino audience. With them behind us, I do not see why we cannot produce great journalism. 

Seventeen years after the fall of Marcos, we have an adolescent press. Its hormones are raging. It is lively and exuberant, but also unruly. Yet, for all its flaws, it has seldom shirked from its duty to hold the powerful to account. My colleagues and I at the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism believe in the power of a watchdog press. We have seen how conscientious reporting empowers citizens with the information they need to take collective action against corruption and the abuse of power. 

Democracy is not a spectator sport, and our people know that. We witnessed in 1986 and again in 2001 the power of people who are informed, engaged, and enraged. We are in awe of such power — and those who hope to lead us should beware of this power as well. 

We thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for affirming our faith and for recognizing the role that investigative journalism plays in our fledgling democracy. I will be honest by saying that this democracy has caused us much grief; but despite that, we believe in its promise. We also recognize that democracy is a sham if it is impervious to the pleas of the poor and the powerless, if it is incapable of renewal and reform. 

We thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for recognizing that a collaborative effort is needed to build a free and responsible press. 

We accept this award with gratitude and humility, remembering those who have labored in this field before us, especially those who have been killed or imprisoned for believing in the power of the word. We accept it also in anticipation of those who will come after us. May the power of the word be with them. May they keep the faith alive. 

Mabuhay at maraming salamat.

In China today, vast numbers of rural people have never heard the term AIDS. But AIDS is among them. They call it the “strange disease” and “nameless fever” and they know it is deadly. Well over a million of them are believed to be infected. In China, HIV/AIDS spreads much as it does elsewhere. But in parts of the country, as Dr. GAO YAOJIE has shown, most HIV-infected persons are victims not of unprotected sex or needle sharing but of an unscrupulously careless commerce in human blood. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, a lively business arose in China to meet the demand of hospitals and medical-products companies for blood plasma: destitute villagers were paid cash for blood. At local collection stations, technicians drew blood from donors, combined it with that of others to extract plasma, and then re-injected the donors with the now-mixed red blood cells — to strengthen them for the next sale. This profitable and reckless business was conducted by health and military officials until the Chinese government banned it in 1998. Afterwards, underground “bloodheads” moved from village to village to tap plasma for a still-flourishing market. 

Dr. GAO, a specialist in ovarian gynecology, was already retired from Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine when she encountered her first AIDS patient in 1996. She soon diagnosed the forty-year-old woman’s deadly disease and traced it to a tainted blood transfusion. The blood trade was rampant in rural Henan. GAO discerned the connection and sounded the alarm. 

Having no materials to warn people about AIDS and its risks, she wrote a small book herself and distributed it at railroad stations and clinics. She then began to investigate AIDS in Henan’s crowded villages, recording medical histories and documenting them with photographs. As she did so, she uncovered a hidden epidemic. In Wenlou Village, for example, 65 percent of the villagers were HIV-positive. “Everyone sells blood here,” the people told her. GAO eventually estimated that 20 percent of Henan Province’s population was HIV-positive. 

Everywhere she turned, however, GAO faced ignorance about AIDS. She therefore mounted a campaign of her own. Marshalling funds from a few donors but relying mainly on meager personal resources, she published a stream of AIDS-related reports and brochures; she traveled to AIDS-impacted villages to treat and comfort patients and to instruct their neighbors; and, increasingly, she shared what she knew with reporters. 

At first, officials in Henan ignored Dr. GAO’s eccentric crusade. But when newspapers began exposing Henan’s AIDS crisis to the country and the world, local officials reacted. They monitored her movements, tapped her phone, and opened her mail. They confiscated her photographs. They forbade her to speak to journalists. Meanwhile, the people themselves ejected her from clinics and factories and bars as she distributed AIDS materials. But GAO carried on fearlessly, and the tide began to turn. 

The Chinese government has now begun to acknowledge the country’s AIDS crisis and, today, hundreds and thousands of GAO’s books are in open circulation. China has pledged to do better. But progress has been slow in Henan and GAO remains skeptical. 

At seventy-six, GAO works from home and moves sprightly from one chore to the next. She is deeply concerned about China’s unwanted AIDS orphans, who suffer most from the disease’s stigma. She finds families for them and, in wary villages, holds them in her arms. GAO’s work is little more than “flipping spoonfuls of water onto a roaring fire,” she says. But she is motivated by the suffering of her AIDS patients. Each of their photographs tells a sad story, she says. And she remembers every one. 

In electing GAO YAOJIE to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes her fervent personal crusade to confront the AIDS crisis in China and to address it humanely.

(Read by Mr. Zhou Xingping, representing Dr. Gao.)

Your Excellency President of the Philippines, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, I would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation which has given me this award. It is such an honor for me. I don?t think I have done enough work for deserving this great award for Public Service. As a retired doctor in China, I only did what a doctor should do; I only did what an ordinary Chinese educated person should do for the country and the people.

I first met an AIDS patient in China in 1996 in a Henan hospital. She was a 40-year-old rural woman, found out to be HIV-positive only a few days before she died of AIDS. This made me think that in China, people including most doctors still have no knowledge about this deadly disease. The woman was just one of thousands who died of this disease, and most of them did not even know what disease killed them.

The woman was infected with HIV through a hospital blood transfusion. As I knew even before, since the early 90s, blood trade was rampant in hundreds of villages in Henan province. Around 2 million farmers in Henan province have sold their blood to make money from 1991 to 1996.

I was worried about the situation and what was going to happen, but I had no power, no money. So I started to write; I printed some materials on AIDS. I went to railway stations, public squares, and crowded streets, to offer them to people. The first year, I printed and distributed more than 500,000 copies. I also often went to the countryside where I have seen that in most of the AIDS villages, people were dying without care by the government.

After parents died of AIDS, their orphans have no food and no money to go to school. Most of the AIDS families, including the children, were looked down upon by other people within and outside their villages until most of the other villagers found out later that they, too, were infected with HIV. It was so miserable, as I can describe it, life in the villages was full of poverty, illness and corruption by local officials.

I will tell a story, so that you may understand why I still want to do whatever I can for AIDS victims in Henan province, in spite of so many difficulties I have to face. In 2000, I went to a village. As I passed a narrow lane, I heard a child shouting, “Mama, come down; mama, come down.” When I went into the house, I saw the child’s mother had hanged herself. The little child did not know his mother had already died; he was pulling her foot and kept calling his mother to come down from where she was. The mother found out she was HIV-positive not long before; her husband had previously died of AIDS and they have wasted all their money to fake doctors. This kind of story is everywhere in all the AIDS villages in Henan province.

I was lucky with my difficulties in working in the villages. When I was in trouble, journalists, both local and international, helped me. With their help, the Henan AIDS crisis was revealed to the public. With their stories, more and more people are being alerted on the AIDS problem in China.

My belief is this: to understand AIDS, patients should be treated nicely. To help them, even take care of them and not look down upon them is everyone’s duty for society.

For my work, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my husband, my sons and daughters who have given me so much support these past years. Without their support and sacrifice, my work could not be done.

Again, I would like to say that what I did is what I should do as a citizen. Also I hope everyone shares my belief. AIDS work is everyone’s responsibility.

Thank you very much.

East Timor, or Timor Lorosae, is Asia’s newest nation. For hundreds of years it was a Portuguese colony, a sleeping backwater of Portugals long-sleeping empire. But the East Timorese awoke to a new invader in 1975: Indonesia. Their armed resistance led to brutal reprisals and for nearly a quarter of a century the people of East Timor suffered under the hard hand of the Indonesian armed forces. Some 200,000 of them perished. 

ANICETO GUTERRES LOPES was eight years old when Indonesia seized his homeland. Coming of age amid the unwelcome occupation, he became a resister and, in 1985, took up the study of law at Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia. There he learned that Indonesian law actually upheld certain basic rights that were being routinely denied in East Timor. And he met Indonesian lawyers and activists who stood up for these rights despite their own country’s repressive dictatorship. They became his mentors and allies. 

When ANICETO subsequently launched his law practice in East Timor, his clients told him their stories. My husband was taken by soldiers two years ago. My son has been jailed and tortured. Armed men have raped our daughter. ANICETO did what little he could, given the unchecked power of the occupiers. Meanwhile, he recorded every story and worked quietly with others to prepare a different future for East Timor. 

In 1996, ANICETO founded Yayasan HAK, or Human Rights and Justice Foundation, to provide free legal services to human rights victims. As director and, for a time, the group’s only lawyer, he defended prominent political prisoners and ordinary Timorese alike. His foundation methodically documented massacres, extrajudicial killings, tortures, rapes, and arbitrary arrests, 339 cases in its first year alone, and became the single authoritative source about such abuses in East Timor. ANICETO announced these findings publicly and, through vernacular newspapers and radio, educated the people about their rights under Indonesian and international law. Few dared to speak so openly. He learned to live with harassment and threats. 

When, in 1999, a new government in Jakarta offered East Timor the option of independence through a popular referendum, the Indonesian military recruited East Timorese militia bands to intimidate pro-independence voters. As they launched a reign of terror, Aniceto organized election monitors. In the September polls, 78 percent of the voters chose independence. The militias killed and injured thousands of people in revenge and destroyed homes and buildings everywhere, including Aniceto?s own house and foundation headquarters. 

As East Timor prepared for independence under the transitional authority of the United Nations, ANICETO pondered his country’s inadequate judicial system. How could it possibly cope with all the unspeakable things that had happened? With others, he proposed a truth commission for East Timor. When the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation was formally established in 2002, ANICETO was chosen unanimously to lead it. 

ANICETO’s commission seeks both to uncover the ugly truths of the past and to confront them. Today, as commission teams investigate past political crimes, former victims and perpetrators are facing each other in grassroots reconciliation meetings throughout the country. Communities themselves are meting out penance to remorseful militia men and to perpetrators of assault, vandalism, and other “small crimes.” In East Timor, however, murderers, rapists, and torturers must still face the courts. 

Soft-spoken ANICETO, now thirty-six, is often exhausted. It is not just the never-ending work. It is the pressure to change East Timor’s culture of violence and retribution, a lingering impact of trauma and war. This weighs heavily on the new nation. “We need to recognize this heaviness in our past,” ANICETO says, “and deal with it together.”

In electing ANICETO GUTERRES LOPES to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his courageous stand for justice and the rule of law during East Timor’s turbulent passage to nationhood.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen. 

Allow me to express my happiness in taking part in this event, something that I could never have imagined in the past. I stand before this honorable forum to accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award, as the first East Timorese to receive this Award in the history of this esteemed Foundation. 

First of all, from the bottom of my heart, I wish to thank those who, through a careful and deliberate process, have selected me for this year’s Award in the category of Emergent Leadership. Your decision has not only brought me to this event, but has given me further responsibility to remain committed to the struggle of justice, freedom, democracy and the rule of law in East Timor and the rest of the world. 

I wish to extend my gratitude to the people of Timor-Leste, especially those who suffered from injustice and human rights violations during the long years of political conflict, and those with whom I struggled in our collective quest for freedom. They have given me inspiration and motivation; they have strengthened my commitment and made me worthy to receive this Award. It is to them that I dedicate this Award. 

My special thanks to my family and friends from the Hak Foundation, without whom I would not be here today, and the Commissioners and staff of the Commisssion for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. I wish also to thank all the international activists whose belief in our cause never wavered, even during the darkest hours, and the Indonesian human rights community whose courage continues to be an inspiration. 

This Award gives recognition to all the people of East Timor, who have only recently breathed the air of freedom. We are facing many challenges in building a new nation. We are learning how to guide ourselves from our dark past into a more democratic and just future. My work during our struggle, the transition and now in our independence, has served to crystallise and confirm my strongest belief. It is my conviction that there can be no way forward to peace and prosperity without a firm foundation of justice, human rights and the rule of law which relates equally to all people. 

It is this foundation which provides security for people to live their daily lives without fear; it is a necessary factor if we are to achieve reconciliation and leave violence behind as a historical lesson to remember, but never to repeat. It is the base which will give certainty to our economic and social development. This foundation is, I believe, the key to our future. In East Timor, one of the initiatives we are now building is the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. The Commission is a bridge from the past to our future. 

Through the work of the Commission, we have collected statements from thousands of ordinary East Timorese, many whom live in the remote mountains, who have personal stories of suffering abuse and violations. We have witnessed the greatness of their spirit during village reconciliation meetings when victims meet and reconcile with people who have harmed them and their communities in the past. We have learned from their resilience, their spirit of forgiveness, and their unrelenting thirst for justice. 

The road ahead of us is still long and difficult. The struggle to uphold the rule of law and human rights principles continues to be relevant, not only in East Timor, but increasingly in a world where might makes right, and where human rights are often only for the strong. It is the leadership of such a world that today’s youth will inherit. In stepping into the shoes of today’s leaders, we need most of all to be courageous and remain constant to our principles. For me, these principles remain firmly anchored in human rights, justice and the rule of law. 

In Timor-Leste we have learned painful lessons from our past: that unrestrained brute force creates not peace but further conflict; and that where human rights are not protected, there will be lasting violence — not lasting peace. This is an experience that is shared by far too many countries around the globe, and yet somehow, it is often forgotten. Let us constantly be reminded of these lessons from the past, and embrace them as the basis for our future. 

I am truly honored by the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. 

Thank you.

If the poorest families of Andhra Pradesh State in India did not indenture their children to serve in the households of landlords, or to harvest cottonseeds and flowers, or to herd goats for wealthier neighbors — or if they simply did not send them to work in local factories instead of sending them to school — would not these poor families be even poorer? Many well-meaning people think so. But SHANTHA SINHA, Secretary of the Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya (MV) Foundation, disagrees. And in Andhra Pradesh, she is proving she is right. 

As head of an extension program at the University of Hyderabad in 1987, Sinha organized a three-month-long “camp” to prepare children rescued from bonded labor to attend school. Later, in 1991, she guided her family’s MV Foundation — established to honor her grandfather — to take up this idea as part of its overriding mission in Andhra Pradesh. This was to link the total abolition of child labor to the absolute right of every child to go to school. 

In the poverty-stricken villages of Ranga Reddy District, SINHA and her foundation team encouraged local people to identify out-of-school and bonded children and urged their parents and employers to release them. They then organized transition camps to prepare the children to attend school. In doing so, they found allies among the youth and among teachers and local officials and even among one-time employers of child workers. With assistance from local and international donors, they expanded. By 1999, the MV Foundation was active in five hundred villages. 

By this time, SINHA’s original transition camps had grown into full-fledged residential “bridge schools.” Here children accustomed only to the factory or farm were introduced to a joyous but disciplined haven of learning. Using familiar songs, riddles, and newspapers, volunteer teachers developed the children’s basic skills and introduced them to the pleasures of reading. They then exposed them to a formal curriculum, to prepare them to enter a public school. Either through bridge schools or direct enrollment, some 250,000 former child workers have now done so. 

SHANTHA SINHA believes that poor children belong in normal schools, not part-time ones. She therefore seeks to improve the public schools where bridge-school students eventually enroll. Working locally in each school district, her foundation mobilizes parents, teachers, and elected officials to insist upon better schools and to support the cost of schoolhouse improvements and extra teachers. 

SINHA’s formal organization is relatively small but nearly thirty thousand volunteers and countless youth clubs, village education committees, teachers’ groups, and other affiliated organizations are carrying its spirit and work ever farther afield. Through this ripple effect, the foundation is creating a social climate hostile not only to child labor but also to child marriage and other practices that deny children the right to a normal childhood. Today the MV Foundation’s bridge schools and programs extend to 4,300 villages. More significantly, SINHA’s effective strategies have been adopted by the state and are now being implemented throughout Andhra Pradesh. 

A self-effacing leader who works at many levels at once, SHANTHA SINHA is “constantly networking,” she says. She wants people to know: Poor families who withdraw their children from work and send them to school do not become poorer. Family productivity rises when children go to school; job opportunities for adults improve when children no longer work. Ending child labor and educating children, she says, will lead to less poverty, not more. In SINHA’s bridge schools, children celebrate this hope. “Let us go to school,” they sing. “Let us change our lives.” 

In electing SHANTHA SINHA to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her guiding the people of Andhra Pradesh to end the scourge of child labor and send all of their children to school.

I accept the great honour bestowed upon me with humility. I am overwhelmed to be included with eminent personages and to be a part of such a great tradition of Asia. 

I owe this award to the parents in Andhra Pradesh who believed that their children deserve the best, and were willing to make enormous sacrifices to give them a life of dignity. The voice of these parents cuts across cultures such as tribal communities, minorities, dalits and others; across livelihood patterns such as agricultural labourers, landless labour, small and marginal peasants, artisans, fishermen, migrant labour, those engaged in informal work in rural, urban and semi-urban contexts. They have shown beyond doubt that there is a crying demand for education. 

I also owe the award to all the children who have braved their way to schools and are willing to fight a daily battle to continue until they finish school. It is no exaggeration to say that these young girls and boys, and their acts of defiance are paving the way for future generations of children and their rights. In a sense this award is a vindication of our organization’s stand that “no child must work and every child must go to school.” The award has been owned by thousands of our volunteers who are working relentlessly for the protection of children’s rights, especially the right to education. I often wonder what gives our volunteers this capacity to be so tolerant and magnanimous, and to engage even the most difficult of adversaries to become a protagonists for child rights. 

This was possible because of their belief in the path of non-violence and the power of dialogue and discussion. Their inordinate faith in the system and their conviction that it is possible to build a norm in favour of child rights is, indeed, so very touching. They know that in the emancipation of children, and building a society that respects them, lay the foundation for the emancipation of all. 

The Award has enthused all our partners — NGOs, government officials, donors, parents, youth, elected representatives, teachers, lobbyists — those who ardently believe that abolishing all forms of child labour and sending children to full-time formal schools is non-negotiable. There is a mood of celebration shared by everyone who is contributing towards the protection of child rights. Even in the remotest of villages in Andhra Pradesh, meetings and rallies are being held; messages of congratulations and greetings are being exchanged, giving all of us great sense of pride. 

It is still hard to believe the dramatic effect the Award has had. Protection of child rights has now made the headlines in the press and on TV. The possibility of children enjoying the right to education is being intensely discussed in the media, in schools, at work places, in farms and factories and in government departments. This is something we had always dreamed must happen. The Ramon Magsaysay Award has made it possible almost overnight. We do hope to seize this moment to move further towards the abolition of child labour. I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for putting the issue of child rights on centre stage!

In India, democracy took root despite extreme ethnic diversity and deep social cleavages. This remarkable success reflects the profound commitment of India’s founders to elected government. It also reflects the wisdom of India’s constitution, which in providing for elections also provides for a powerful nonpartisan commission to conduct them. It falls to the Election Commission of India to ensure that India’s important federal and state elections are well organized, free, and fair. This is no small task given the subcontinent’s 650 million voters and, these days, rising religious fundamentalism and raging communal hatreds. This immense and elaborate responsibility now rests on the shoulders of Chief Election Commissioner JAMES MICHAEL LYNGDOH. 

Of Khasi tribal origin, LYNGDOH hails from the extreme northeastern corner of India. Imbibing moral rectitude from his father, a district judge, LYNGDOH completed his education in Delhi and entered the elite Indian Administrative Service when he was twenty-two. He quickly became known for probity and toughness and for favoring the underdog against politicians and the local rich. In one early post, his principled execution of mandated land reforms so enraged landlords that he was transferred before the year was out. Similar clashes with the powers-that-be marked his rise in the Service. But rise he did, eventually serving as Secretary, Coordination and Public Grievances, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India. In 1997, the president named LYNGDOH one of India’s three election commissioners. By 2001 he was chief. 

LYNGDOH soon faced crises in two of India’s most troubled states. In Jammu-Kashmir, where India was locked in a potentially explosive standoff with Pakistan and local secessionists, state elections fell due in 2002. Many people doubted that they could be conducted credibly. Lyngdoh thought otherwise. Pushing ahead despite a vicious cross-border assassination campaign and a boycott, he updated and verified the election rolls, introduced voter identity cards, and added a thousand new voting sites. He recruited nonpartisan poll officers for every polling station. And after warning the army to stand clear, he heightened election security by mobilizing the local police and paramilitary forces from outside the state. Then he urged the people “to vote fearlessly.” Forty-four percent did so. Even LYNGDOH’s critics acknowledged that the polling had been fair, causing many in India to seize this triumph of “ballots over bullets” as a sign that the long-festering crisis of Jammu-Kashmir might yet be resolved peacefully. 

Meanwhile, stirred by a terrorist attack in late February killing 58 Hindu pilgrims, Hindus in Gujarat were slaughtering hundreds of the state’s Muslims and torching their homes and neighborhoods. When the Hindu ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dissolved the state government and called for elections amid the sectarian carnage, LYNGDOH used his authority to say no. Citing the large number of displaced persons and the pervasive atmosphere of fear in Gujarat, he postponed the elections. Although vilified for doing so, he stood his ground and carefully prepared for the delayed polls. He insisted, for example, that local officials and police who had been complicit in the anti-Muslim pogrom be transferred; he outlawed campaign activities that inflamed communal passions; and he set up special polling places for Muslim refugees. In December, under tight security the people voted, some 61 percent of them! Again, even skeptics agreed that the elections were fair and credible. 

LYNGDOH, sixty-four, is a modest man known for his quiet ways and his transparent integrity. As a career civil servant, he has learned that it is best to avoid the limelight and the company of politicians. His impact lies elsewhere. As one admirer puts it, “He has always been a quiet fighter from within.”

In electing JAMES MICHAEL LYNGDOH to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the board of trustees recognizes his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in strife-torn India.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen. 

Managing elections in multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic India, the largest democracy in the world with an electorate of 650 million, can never be easy. We are today witnessing a factious polity emerging after a prolonged one-party dominance where the very basic liberal and secular ethos of the country is being challenged. The incorporation of the underprivileged into the democratic process and the devolution of democracy to local bodies and villages has set in motion a heady sense of empowerment coupled with the illusion that resources are unlimited, leading to a complete dissolution of responsibility and an exercise of authority for no other reason than to loot and plunder for personal benefit. Increasing criminalization and religious and sectarian issues have overtaken sensible and reasoned politics. The common man has become the victim of manipulation, malfeasance and the injustice of politicians. 

The Election Commission remains constantly at its wits’ end to neutralize all those who are inimical to the cause of good elections. We in the Commission today, fortunately, enjoy the highest public trust in the country — a trust established over a period of sustained effort and struggle. Our independence is well-established and accepted. This recognition being given today reinforces our institution’s credibility even more. 

The achievements of the Commission in the Jammu-Kashmir and Gujarat elections would have been incomplete without the sustained support from the people of the country. That our actions in Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat could instill a sense of security and build the faith of an average elector in the democratic process is very satisfying. But, the real heroes are the voters of these two states who reposed abiding faith in the democratic process. They have to be acknowledged today. 

There is also the Indian middle class now raising a collective voice for fairness. Their voice is being heard in the form of public interest litigations and through non-governmental organizations. It is their voice that now forces the candidates standing in the elections to declare their assets and credentials, including their criminal past. And this is making a difference in the Indian electoral scenario. 

The maturity of the media, particularly the Indian electronic media, was very visible in the two elections. Their aggressive, pervasive and intrusive presence made every level of election authority subject to immediate scrutiny. Because of this, the media helped to create an environment where transgressions became visible and, therefore, difficult to suppress. They were able to not only reflect the expectations and sentiments of the people but also to make a significant contribution by their persistence to pursue the truth. 

India has established its democratic credentials, but is still far from being perfect. We have very many unfinished tasks. I am grateful to all those who have stood by us and continue to support us in our endeavours. 

It is an honour for me to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service. I accept this Award with the greatest humility and utmost gratitude. I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for bestowing this honour on me. Thank you all.

The people of mountain Afghanistan rarely hold the world’s attention for long. Even when they are drawn into the intrigues and bloody conflicts of big powers — as they repeatedly have been — the rest of the world soon averts its eyes when the fighting dies down and there is nothing more to see but rubble and refugees and the region’s enduring poverty. Dr. TETSU NAKAMURA of Japan is someone who does not avert his eyes. He has devoted himself to this austere region and nearby Pakistan for nineteen years. 

Born in Fukuoka City in 1946, NAKAMURA studied medicine at Kyushu University and, after 1973, began his medical practice in Japan. His youthful passion for mountain climbing drew him to the rugged high ranges of eastern Afghanistan. The warmhearted people he met there lived wholly beyond the reach of modern medicine. This led him in 1984 to volunteer with the Japan Overseas Christian Medical Cooperative Service at Mission Hospital Peshawar, near the Afghanistan border in northwest Pakistan. 

As head of the hospital’s leprosy-control unit, NAKAMURA explored the area’s rural hamlets and threw himself into addressing the absence of any kind of medical care. Meanwhile, a war fed by the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan raged across the border. NAKAMURA organized emergency health centers for the Afghan refugees streaming into Pakistan and, inside Afghanistan, set up mobile clinics in the war zone. During these early years, he immersed himself completely in the lives of his companions, learning their languages and accepting their perils. Moving with the mujahideen, he earned a reputation for bravery that he carries up till now. When the Taliban later established its authority in Afghanistan, Nakamura won their confidence too and operated clinics in territories under their sway. 

NAKAMURA wrote about these frontier experiences in Japanese newspapers and books, confronting readers with positive images of Muslims that ran counter to stereotype. His publications and speaking tours in Japan helped him raise money to support his endeavors and gradually to expand them. In 1998, he built the 70-bed Peshawar Medical Services Hospital to serve as his base. Here and in four satellite clinics, Nakamura and his team of Japanese and local doctors and staff now provide comprehensive low-cost medical services to over 150,000 patients a year, including victims of a devastating regional drought. The United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 infuriated NAKAMURA. He raised more than three million dollars to distribute wheat and cooking oil to starving families in Kabul whose food supplies had been cut off by American bombing. 

NAKAMURA’s long years in the region have taught him that medical services and emergency aid alone cannot alter the basic equation of poverty. Since 2000, he has been helping villagers in drought-stricken areas to restore and improve their water supply. Today, some 250,000 villagers in more than a thousand locations draw life-saving water from NAKAMURA’s wells. He is linking his new irrigation project to a thorough program for community revitalization and self-sufficiency. 

When he is not on the move, soft-spoken, fifty-six-year-old NAKAMURA lives with his staff at the hospital in Peshawar. He avoids international aid-givers and seeks no government assistance, preferring to rely on twelve thousand loyal donors. He takes no money for his own services, however, and supports himself and his family by periodically practicing medicine in Japan. 

In his harsh beloved hills, NAKAMURA strives to transcend politics, religion, and ethnicity and to practice mutual dependence. For all of us, he believes, this is the key to peace. It is, he says, a “spirit that must be built in our hearts.” 

In electing TETSU NAKAMURA to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his passionate commitment to ease the pain of war, disease, and calamity among refugees and the mountain poor of the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen. 

It is a great honour for me to have been selected as recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding this year. At the same time, I am impressed by this recognition of warm sympathy from friends in Asia. I understand this award is not for my own achievement, but also for that of the 300 local Afghan and Pakistani staff of the Peshawar-kai Medical Services, the Peshawar-kai head office staff and the 12,000 Japanese Peshawar-kai members who have been supporting our work for the past 20 years. 

In the past 20 years, we have faced almost all possible conflicts and distresses in the Asian region: religious conflicts; restriction of states; the conflict of ethnic majority vs. other ethnics; tribal strife; contradiction between rural and urban areas; the struggle of rapid modernization versus traditional society; the expanding gap between rich and poor; and the contradictions between so-called “modernized advanced nations” and developing nations. 

Even under such a situation, different people were able to co-operate with each other, probably because we have respected ?life? and have made every effort to seek common ground as human beings. Although this was not always easy, and sometimes great patience was needed, my experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan tells me it is possible to find this common ground, and to strengthen it by working together in mutual respect. I am convinced that we have something to share as human beings by understanding the differences among each other, even in diverse Asian regions. War is not the solution. 

Under the recent climate where the international community approves the exercise of state violence without hesitation, as seen in many developed countries, Asian brothers who are in a vulnerable position are denied the opportunity to open their mouths, and thinking citizens are forced to be silent. It is unbearable to lose our own identities, to be deprived of human pride and peaceful lives. Despite the problems of kaleidoscopic politics and transient international attention, we shall continue to share life’s joys and sorrows with the local people in Afghanistan and Pakistan,in addition to acting as witnesses to their condition. 

I hope that our small contributions to this corner of Asia will become a sacrificial building block for symbiosis and harmony, transcending any established positions and prejudices. 

Thank you very much.

Seiei Toyama was born to a family of modest means in 1906 in Yamanashi, Japan. His mother strove to educate him well and, in 1934, he graduated from Kyoto University’s Department of Agriculture. The following year, he embarked on an extended research tour of China. When Japan’s invasion in 1937 cut his studies short, Toyama returned to Japan bearing a surprising observation. In northwest China he had seen gourds and grapes and other fruits growing perfectly well in the desert sand. At Tottori University, he experimented in nearby sand dunes and, over the next many years, developed irrigation techniques that transformed Tottori’s barren dunes into profitable fruit, vegetable, and flower farms. When he retired in 1972, Toyama was Japan’s leading authority on desert agriculture. Still strong, and eager to devote his golden years to something useful, he began to apply his knowledge to China.

In one early effort, Toyama introduced the kudzu vine to secure the badly eroded banks of the Yellow River in northwest China. After persuading Japanese farmers to donate seeds, he and teams of volunteers planted three thousand kudzu seedlings along the fragile riverbanks. Meanwhile, at the Shapotou Experimental Station in Ningxia Huizu Autonomous Region, Toyama introduced modern grape-growing techniques and revived the region’s languishing vineyards.

In 1990, Toyama began working with the Engebei Desert Development Model Zone in Inner Mongolia. Here China’s scientists were battling severe desertification exacerbated by seasonal floods. Toyama recommended large stands of fast-growing poplar trees. To assist, in 1991 he founded the Japan Association for Greening Deserts and recruited tree-planting volunteers from Japan. Toyama’s volunteers had to pay their own way and even bring their own shovels and wheelbarrows. The first batch of two hundred included office workers, civil servants, homemakers, and students. Thousands more like them followed in the years to come to plant trees, alongside Chinese volunteers, as part of Toyama’s Project Green Hope.

Each time his volunteers set to work, Toyama made sure that every sapling was properly nested in the earth. Afterwards, he nurtured the young trees and monitored their growth. And when disaster struck—such as the floods of 1996 that swept away a million poplars—he doggedly replanted. As a result, today more than ten thousand acres of Inner Mongolia have been transformed from a barren wasteland to a stable habitat for birds and other animals and a green oasis where farmers grow vegetables and grapes, apples, and pears.

Altogether, Toyama has recruited and led 335 volunteer teams to plant trees in China. More than three million of his trees now grace the country’s desert landscape.

Toyama understands that greening the deserts of China will take “at least a century” and that his steps are merely the first ones. Nevertheless, his landmark demonstrations have inspired Chinese environmentalists and skeptical government officials alike. Meanwhile, more than thirty Japanese voluntary organizations today are planting trees in China.

Toyama, now ninety-six, is happiest in his high boots and sun helmet at work in the desert. He is sometimes cross with his young volunteers. “Plant them straight,” he barks. But in Engebei today a bronze statue of him celebrates his remarkable work and spirit. People there call him “Great Old Man.”

As a Japanese and a devout Buddhist, Toyama is ever mindful of Japan’s profound debt to China. For him, tree planting is a sort of “green atonement” for sins of the past. But it is also a gesture of hope for the future. “Greening the deserts is a testimony to our desire to live in peace and harmony,” he says. So, “Let’s start digging!”

In electing Seiei Toyama to receive the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding the board of trustees recognizes his twenty-year crusade to green the deserts of China in a spirit of solidarity and peace.

Your Excellency, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

It is a great honor for me to have been selected as one of the recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding this year. I wish to express my deep appreciation to the members of the Foundation for giving me this award, and to all of you gathered here today. This award is not only for myself, but for everyone who took part in greening the desert.

I am especially grateful for the interest taken by our friends in the Philippines, and our fellow Asians, in the problem of desertification, and for this great honor bestowed upon my humble self today.

I consider the desert a place that is not suited to human life. This is the reason why people living in the desert suffer from poverty. It has always been my belief that plants and trees are life itself, and that by planting trees in the desert we participate in creating life. By so doing, we provide peoples of the desert with a means to escape poverty, and live a bountiful and meaningful life.

You are aware of our problem in Asia. One-fourth of the earth’s landmass is composed of deserts. I find it significant that people from Japan, a country with no desert, are able to rise up and join forces with the people of the Philippines, to help our desert brothers and sisters all over the world in overcoming poverty. I believe that as Japanese, who have no experience of the desert, this is our fate, our duty, indeed our life.
In receiving this award, I am especially moved by the deep understanding of the people of the Philippines, and their desire to recognize, and help, our endeavors.

I really can not find the words to express my gratitude. My heart is full of gratitude and happiness.

I am now 96 years old, but I am filled with the desire to give my all to make every person in the world a happy person! That perhaps best explains my feelings on accepting this award.

Our world is a world of turmoil, of strife, and of wars. This is the reason why we can not find happiness on earth. In the midst of all this, I find this recognition and assistance from the Philippines an encouragement for us in Japan to continue our efforts to help the peoples of the world in attaining happiness. For this, I am truly grateful.

Thank you to all of you from the bottom of my heart.