Labor activist wins Magsaysay award
Labor activist wins Magsaysay award
MANILA (Agencies): Indonesia's woman activist Dita Indah Sari was included in the list of 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award winners, organizers announced on Monday.
Dita, 29, jointly won the newly created Emergent Leadership category with fellow woman activist from Cambodia Oung Chanthol.
Dita was honored for being at the forefront of the struggle against labor abuses in Indonesia, while 34-year-old Oung Chanthol was honored for her work in opposing crimes against women in Cambodia.
The Surabaya District Court sentenced her to five years in prison in 1997 on subversion charges for organizing a labor rally demanding a pay hike. She was released in 1999 after being pardoned by former president B.J. Habibie.
She then formed the National front for Labor Struggle (FNPBI) which she chairs and continued her fight for the basic rights of workers.
Dita will join senior journalist Mochtar Lubis and noted author Pramudya Ananta Toer as Indonesian winners of the award which is often billed as Asia's version of the Nobel Prize.
The "Emergent Leadership" category, according to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation "affirms the role of young people who are effecting significant social change in their immediate sphere and beyond".
"The awardees are being given recognition for their work as selfless achievers who provide models for the new generation of Asians," foundation president Carmencita Abella said in a statement.
"These men and women have exhibited greatness of spirit in the service of the people," she added.
The awards will be formally presented on Aug. 31 in Manila.
Other winners include Wu Qing, 63, a deputy in the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, Yuan Longping, a 71-year-old plant scientist from China, Indian Rajendra Singh, 43, Japanese Ikuo Hirayama, 70, and K.W.D. Amaradeva, 74, of Sri Lanka.
The annual Ramon Magsaysay Awards were established in honor of the Philippines' third president, who died in a plane crash in the 1950s.
A prize of US$50,000 per category is awarded by the foundation.