20 April 2022

ASEAN Nobel Laureates and Thought Leaders discuss the promise of freedom and the challenge it faces in an age where information is powered by social media

By
Buranond Kijwatanachai
AUN Programme Officer;

On 19 April, the 6th iteration of the ECAAR Dialogues webinar series was held under the theme “Freedom in Southeast Asia: A Dialogue on the Reality of Freedom with Nobel Laureates and Thought Leaders in Southeast Asia”. The webinar featured two Southeast Asian Nobel Peace Prize Laureates José Ramos-Horta, who won the award in 1996 and running for the presidency of Timor-Leste as of the time of writing, and Maria Ressa, who won the award in 2021, as well as 3 other Southeast Asian thought leaders. The webinar attracted over a total of 180 participants who attended the session through Zoom Webinar. 

The webinar was divided into two sessions with the first featuring the two Nobel Laureates engaging in a conversation that covered the two speakers’ unique perspectives, one a political leader and one a journalist, on the reality of freedom and how they each had to fight to maintain their freedom. 

The second session featured H.E. Yuyun Wahyuningrum, the Representative of Indonesia to ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), Dr. Surachanee Hammerli Sriyai, a Lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, and Vincent Carlo Legara, a political science student at Ateneo de Manila University. The session was moderated by Dr. Bob Aubrey of the ASEAN Human Development Organization. The session covered a variety of topics ranging from the value of instilling critical thinking from a young age to help the new generation navigate a more digitized world, the fracturing of youth expectations of a modern society against its reality, to the establishment of institutionalized concepts and solutions for ethical issues. 

To see the full webinar, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK2xxz_cbQQ