Three Chinese environmental campaigners were among the winners of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awards, regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel prize.
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, a Filipino couple who work to educate the poor and a Bangladeshi advocate for the disabled were also honored yesterday by the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation, based in Manila.
Photographer Huo Daishan received the award for publicizing the massive pollution of the Huai River, the third largest in China, despite harassment from local officials and factory owners, the foundation said in a statement.
Chinese Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Pan Yue (潘岳) and Fu Qiping (傅企平), a village chief in Zhejiang Province, received awards for their work on behalf of the environment on opposite sides of the bureaucracy.
Akiba, a three-term mayor, received the award for his work to abolish nuclear weapons, the statement said.
Christopher and Maria Victoria Bernido, respected physicists and educators, were awarded for pioneering new teaching techniques for the poor in the Philippines.
A.H.M. Noman Khan was honored for his work in leading a non-governmental organization that helps the 13 million disabled people of Bangladesh.
The awards, founded in 1957, are given every year to Asians who have “transformed their societies for the better,” the foundation said.
“The Magsaysay awardees of 2010 are seven remarkable individuals deeply engaged in reinventing the future for a better Asia, tapping into and strengthening the power of community,” foundation president Carmencita Abella said.
The awards are named after a popular Philippine president who died in a plane crash in 1957.
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