Hiroshima`s mayor, 6 others win 2010 Ramon Magsaysay awards+

MANILA, Aug. 2 Kyodo -
Hiroshima City Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba was named Monday as a winner of this
year's Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia's version of the Nobel Prize, for his
leading role in the global campaign for total abolition of nuclear weapons.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said Akiba is being recognized for ''his
principled and determined leadership in a sustained global campaign to mobilize
citizens, pressure governments, and build the political will to create a world
free from the perils of nuclear war.''
Besides Akiba, six more individuals will receive awards in a ceremony to be
held Aug. 31 in Manila. They are A.H.M. Noman Khan of Bangladesh, Christopher
Bernido and Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido of the Philippines, Huo Daishan of
China, and Pan Yue and Fu Qiping, also of China.
Akiba, 67, now in his third term as mayor, issued a statement in Hiroshima
after the announcement, saying he feels ''very privileged'' to receive the
prestigious award.
He pledged to redouble efforts aimed at achieving a world completely free of
nuclear weapons by the year 2020 as called by the Mayors for Peace, which
involves 3,880 cities around the world and which he himself heads.
The foundation said Akiba ''recognizes that nuclear disarmament is an
exceedingly complex issue caught up in the volatile realities of global
realpolitik. Yet he remains steadfast, believing that the world's citizens can
change the course of the global community -- when they are able to act in
concert.''
Akiba first became active in the anti-nuclear movement as a student in the
1960s. His anti-nuke efforts intensified while teaching at a university in the
United States.
He pursued his peace advocacy further and was elected to the Japanese House of
Representatives in 1990, after which he assumed office as Hiroshima's mayor in
1999.
''Akiba painfully recognized that Hiroshima, as history's first victim of
nuclear warfare, has the moral obligation to warn the world of the nuclear
danger. Thus, he placed himself and his city at the forefront of the
international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons,'' the foundation said.
Building on the work of his predecessors, it said, Akiba developed Hiroshima as
the International Peace Culture City, with its civic facilities, year-round
exhibitions, commemorations, and educational activities -- all aimed at raising
peace awareness in Japan and around the world.
The other awardees include Khan, 59, who was recognized for his ''pioneering
leadership in mainstreaming persons with disabilities in the development
process of Bangladesh.''
Bernido, 53, and his wife Maria Victoria, 48, were awarded for their
''purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative,
low-cost and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of
great scarcity and daunting poverty.''
Huo, 56, was awarded for his ''selfless and unrelenting efforts, despite
formidable odds, to save China's great river Huai and the numerous communities
who draw life from it.''
Public servants Pan, 50, and Fu, 61, were recognized for ''their exemplary
vision and zeal, as public servants at two levels of the state bureaucracy, in
advocating the inseparability of development and environment in uplifting the
lives of the Chinese people.''
The Magsaysay Awards are named in honor of Philippine President Ramon
Magsaysay, who died in a plane crash in 1957. They are given every year to
individuals or organizations in Asia.
The winners will each receive a certificate and a medallion bearing the
likeness of the president. Each award will be accompanied by a sum of $50,000.
==Kyodo