Four get Ramon Magsaysay Award

A Cambodian psychiatrist treating victims of the Khmer Rouge and a French environmentalist cleaning up Indonesian rivers were among the winners yesterday of the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award -- considered Asia's Nobel Prize.

The annual award, established in 1957 and named after a Philippines president who died in a plane crash, honours those who have performed "selfless service to the peoples of Asia", reports AFP.

The foundation that runs the award announced four winners in an online announcement. Among them was Sotheara Chhim, 54, a psychiatrist and survivor of the murderous, ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime that killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, overwork and mass executions in the 1970s.

French environmental activist and filmmaker Gary Bencheghib, 27, was given the award for his efforts to clean up Indonesia's polluted waterways.

Filipino doctor Bernadette Madrid, 64, got the award for setting up child protection centres across the Philippines.

Japanese opthalmologist Tadashi Hattori, 58, was honoured for providing free eye surgeries in Vietnam, where such specialists and facilities are limited.