Honor thy enemy: Special message to Chinese rulers

Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila

The absence of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from this year's Ramon Magsaysay Awards ceremonies shows the challenges that the awards foundation and Manila face in organizing and hosting Asia's most prestigious prize-giving ritual. Historically, it is the President of the Republic who presides over the awards ceremonies.

But this year, Macapagal was noticeably absent. On the eve of her state visit to China, she did not go to the ceremonies apparently so as not to further provoke Beijing, which barred the Chinese winner for public service, Jiang Yanyong, from leaving China for Manila to receive the award.

What was Jiang's sin? He was the retired military physician who, despite Beijing's news blackout and media manipulation, revealed to the world the epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) sweeping China. On April 3, 2003, China's health minister grossly understated the SARS figures in a report.

Jiang, who had gotten first-hand information about the epidemic's deadly spread from Guangdong province to Hong Kong, then issued a letter to the press, challenging the report and giving his own version of the situation.

Only then did Beijing, which had previously ordered hospital officials not to speak about the epidemic lest it disturb important national meetings in the capital, fire the health minister and order a public health campaign. The outbreak was stemmed two months later.

Jiang is not a maverick or a dissident. He's in fact a loyal member of the Communist Party who, like many intellectuals and professionals, suffered persecution during the Hundred Flowers campaign, the Cultural Revolution, and other purges that are usually carried out by utopian socialist lunatics at the cost of so much lives and reputations.

Since Jiang has kept faith with communism and its reputed ability to correct its mistakes and renew itself, he represents perhaps the best hope of communism. But of course, the fact that he continues to be persecuted despite saving China from SARS-and from its harebrained party bosses-should provide caution against hoping too much in communist hope.

Of course, the Chinese authorities may consider the award as a capitalist agitprop to discredit communism since, they may allege, the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation is American-endowed and, therefore, "CIA-funded." But the award really recognizes portraits of courage amid so much adversity and struggles across the world, across races, ideologies and regimes.

By speaking out on the real SARS situation in China, Jiang was like Thomas Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the public-minded doctor in a small town in Norway famous for its public baths who discovers that the water is contaminated and has probably been the cause of some illness among the tourists who are the town's economic lifeblood. When he presents his findings to the town leaders, he runs into the establishment that refuses to close down the baths and contain the epidemic. He is publicly labeled an enemy of the people.

Come to think of it, the other Magsaysay winners are enemies of the people for taking on thankless advocacies that rile the establishment. Our very own Haydee Yorac (honoree for government service) has become the enemy of corrupters for reforming the Presidential Commission on Good Government that is running after the Marcoses, their close associates and other plunderers.

By teaching farmers self-reliance, Prayong Ronnarong of Thailand (community leadership) is the enemy of Thai politicians and businessmen who seek to hold the peasants in their thrall. By promoting literacy and love of the great books of humanity, Abdullah Aby Sayeed of Bangladesh (journalism, literature and creative communication arts) is the enemy of illiteracy and poverty.

By fostering dialogue, Laxminarayan Ramdas of India and Ibn Abdur Rehman of Pakistan (peace and international understanding) is the enemy of jingoists and warmongers who seek to exploit age- old animosities and plunge India and Pakistan into nuclear madness. And by working for the displaced lumad of Mindanao and building peace zones in a land of conflict, Benjamin Abadiano (emergent leadership) is the enemy of those seeking to destroy the peace and put the indigenous people in the crossfire of hate and death.

In the final analysis, the Magsaysay awardees are enemies of despair. They represent the legacy of President Ramon Magsaysay: "Greatness of spirit in selfless service to the people."