Tag: Magsaysay

Ramon Magsaysay Foundation: 12 December 2014

#WhereIsSombath: RMAF marks 2 years of RM Awardees’ disappearance

Where is Sombath?

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) and the community of Magsaysay Awardees had been asking this question for two years now, since RM Awardee Sombath Somphone disappeared in his native Laos.

Somphone received the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 2005 in recognition of “his hopeful efforts to promote sustainable development in Laos by training and motivating its young people to become a generation of leaders.”

He was last seen at around 5:00 p. m. on December 15, 2012 when he left the offices of the Participatory Development Learning Center in Vientiane to go home. He was in his own car; his wife Shui Meng was in another. Footage from CCTV cameras showed that Somphone’s car was stopped at a police outpost, with the Magsaysay awardee leaving his vehicle and another person driving his jeep away. Later, a pick-up truck arrived, Somphone got in, and he and two other men drove off. He did not reach his home, and his family has had no news of him since then.

A few days after the disappearance, the Magsaysay Awards community began sending emails and messages to support Somphone’s family and to ask: “Where is Sombath?” Continue reading “Magsaysay is asking: Where is Sombath?”

PRESS RELEASE
April 17, 2013

Neon green paper with a face drawing and the text “Surface Sombath Somphone.”

This was the symbol adopted by civil society groups that participated in the cultural and solidarity event titled “Public Action to Call on the Philippines and the ASEAN: Surface Sombath Somphone and all Desaparecidos.” The gathering was held last April 12 in front of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs offices in Pasay, Metro Manila.

Sombath Somphone, 60, a community worker and green activist from Laos, is the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Community Leadership. The event marked the 120^th day of his disappearance and protested the seeming inaction of the Laos government.

The participants also sought the Philippine government’s support in ensuring that Sombath’s case is included on the agenda of bilateral meetings of leaders of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Sombath went missing on December 15, 2012. He was last seen in Vientiane, Cambodia, where a CCTV footage showed police stopping his jeep as he drove on the way home.  Two plainclothes men then hauled him onto another vehicle.

It has been four months, and there has since been no information on his whereabouts. The Laos authorities deny involvement.

Sombath’s wife, Ng Shui Meng, is concerned, especially since her husband suffers from prostate cancer. She has received no word on her husband’s fate, but has told media, “I believe he is still alive.”

Officers and staff of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF), led by Awardee Relations Manager Ma. Carmencita Toledo, joined the solidarity event.  Toledo reiterated the support of the Magsaysay Award community and the call to the Lao government to act toward Sombath’s deliverance. Continue reading “Magsaysay Award Foundation joins calls to ‘Surface Sombath’”