Filipino composer Ryan Cayabyab among 2019 Ramon Magsaysay awardees

MANILA, Philippines — Multi-awarded Filipino composer and National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab has been chosen as one of this year’s recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Cayabyab was recognized for “his compositions and performances that have defined and inspired Filipino popular music across generations; his indomitable, undeterred confidence to selflessly seek, mentor and promote young Filipino musical genius for the global stage; and his showing us all that music can indeed instill pride and joy and unify people across the many barriers that divide them.”

“Ryan is driven by a passion to mentor, educate and contribute to the flourishing of Filipino musical talent,” the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) said in a statement announcing this year’s awardees.

The 65-year-old Cayabyab served in the faculty of music of the University of the Philippines. He runs a music studio with his wife and has conducted free workshops for thousands of students across the country.

He is a moving force in the Philpop Musicfest Foundation and the Elements Music Camp, major initiatives dedicated to music training, promoting Filipino music abroad and fostering Filipino cultural identity through music.

In 2018, Cayabyab was conferred National Artist for Music. He was cited for his music that “extols the exuberance of life and human happiness, thus capturing the very essence of our Filipino soul.”

He was also among the recipients of the Ten Outstanding Young Men Awards (TOYM) in 1978.

India’s Ravish Kumar was hailed for “his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfills its noblest aims to advance democracy.” Kumar, 47, is senior executive editor of NDTV India.

“In a media environment threatened by an interventionist state, toxic with jingoist partisans, trolls and purveyors of ‘fake news’ and where the competition for market ratings has put the premium on ‘media personalities,’ ‘tabloidization’ and audience-pandering sensationalism, Ravish has been most vocal on insisting that the professional values of sober, balanced, fact-based reporting be upheld in practice,” the RMAF said.

His “Prime Time” program on NDTV India takes up current social issues.

Ravish interacts easily with the poor, travels extensively and uses social media to stay in touch with his audience, generating from them the stories for his program. Striving for a people-based journalism, he calls his newsroom “the people’s newsroom.”

Independent journalism

Forty-one-year-old Ko Swe Win of Myanmar received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership.

From Left: Angkhana Neelapaijit, Ravish Kumar, Kim Jong-ki and Ko Swe Win

He was recognized for “his undaunted commitment to practice independent, ethical and socially engaged journalism in Myanmar; his incorruptible sense of justice and unflinching pursuit of the truth in crucial but under-reported issues; and his resolute insistence that it is in the quality and force of media’s truth-telling that we can convincingly protect human rights in the world.”

Myanmar has one of the most challenging environments for the practice of journalism in Asia, the RMAF noted.

In 1998, Ko, who was a university student then, was arrested with 67 others for participating in a student demonstration and distributing propaganda materials against the ruling military junta.

Sentenced to 21 years in jail, he was tortured and starved but would turn prison into a learning experience.

Released after seven years in prison, he studied journalism, doing an online undergraduate program and, with a scholarship, finished a master’s degree in journalism at Hong Kong University in 2009.

Ko works as editor-in-chief of online newspaper Myanmar Now. Established in 2015 with seed financing from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Myanmar Now is an independent online news service focused on long-form investigative reports in both Burmese and English.

In 2017, he criticized a powerful, ultranationalist Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, for purveying “hate speech” and publicly commending the killer of a Muslim human rights activist.

Ko Swe Win was sued for defamation, physically assaulted by Wirathu’s supporters and briefly jailed on the trumped-up charge that he had tried to leave the country while on bail.

The judge finally dropped the case last July 2, due largely to the plaintiff’s protracted non-appearance at court hearings.

Human rights advocate Angkhana Neelapaijit from Thailand was recognized for “her unwavering courage in seeking justice for her husband and many other victims of violence and conflict in southern Thailand; her systematic, unflagging work to reform a flawed and unfair legal system and the shining proof she is that the humblest ordinary person can achieve national impact in deterring human rights abuses.”

Neelapaijit, 63, founded Justice for Peace Foundation (JPF), a network of human rights and peace advocates involved in documenting the human rights situation in southern Thailand, providing legal assistance to victims and training women on human rights and the peace process.

In 2004, Neelapaijit’s husband Somchai, a noted human rights lawyer, was abducted in Bangkok the day after he publicly accused the military of torturing detainees in southern Thailand.

“Somchai’s enforced disappearance and subsequent death was a tragic blow to the cause of human rights in the country and a devastating personal nightmare for his family. But it would also be the beginning of a remarkable journey for Somchai’s widow, Angkhana Neelapaijit,” RMAF said.

Angkhana had valiantly worked to bring the police officers involved to trial, but due to a flawed justice system, they were acquitted.

Despite death threats, Angkhana continued to seek justice for her husband and other human rights victims. She applied herself to learning the laws, filing legal appeals and navigating the Thai legal system. She bonded with other victims and worked with civil society groups in and outside Thailand.

In 2015, Angkhana was named commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, the only Commission member with grassroots human rights experience.

South Korean Kim Jong-ki was recognized for “his quiet courage in transforming private grief into a mission to protect Korea’s youth from the scourge of bullying and violence, his unstinting dedication to the goal of instilling among the young the values of self-esteem, tolerance and mutual respect, and his effectively mobilizing all sectors of the country in a nationwide drive that has transformed both policy and behaviors towards building a gentler, non-violent society.”

A highly successful businessman, Kim established the Foundation for Preventing Youth Violence (FPYV), following the death of his 16-year-old son Dae-hyun. Kim, 72, learned that it was bullying in school that drove his son to end his life.

The FPYV is the first organized effort in South Korea to address school violence as a systemic social problem affecting students, families, schools and the community at large.

Under the leadership of Kim, FPYV carried out wide-ranging anti-bullying campaigns which included seminars, rallies, concerts and films; operated a hotline which now takes 30 to 50 calls daily, with the capacity to dispatch staff to respond to urgent cases, and lobbied for needed government policy and legislation.

After 10 years, a law on the Prevention and Handling of School Violence was finally enacted in 2004.

To date, FPYV offers counseling and mediation services in partnership with Korea’s Ministry of Education.

A 2018 survey showed that since FPYV started its campaign in 1995, incidence of school violence has dropped from 20 percent to three percent.

The five 2019 Magsaysay awardees join the community of 330 other Magsaysay laureates who have received Asia’s highest honor and premier prize.

This year’s Magsaysay Award winners will each receive a certificate, a medallion bearing the likeness of the late President and a cash prize.

They will be formally conferred the Magsaysay Award on Sept. 9 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

“The Magsaysay awardees of 2019 all reflect courage undaunted in their commitment to build solutions to vital and complex issues in their societies. Theirs is a moral courage that is unfazed d by repressive systems, or social divisions, or institutional resistance, or deep cultural prejudice, or even by the burdens of building the capacities of others,” RMAF president Carmencita Abella said.