WMary Akrami is the director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center. She represented Afghan civil society at the 2001 Bonn Conference. In 2003 the Afghan Women Skills Development Center opened the first women’s shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan. The shelter provides legal advice, literacy classes, psychological counseling, and basic skills training to women who need them. Akrami is on call 24 hours a day at the shelter, and under her leadership some of the women there have denounced their abusers publicly and filed court cases against them, something almost unheard of before. She has faced threats for her work.
WHoma Arjomand is an Iranian political activist, resident in Canada, where she is a member of the International Campaign against the Sharia Court and the Director of Children First Now.
WBaek Jeong-gi was a Korean anarchist independence fighter during the Japanese occupation.
WAleta Baun is an Indonesian environmental activist. She has been described as the Indonesian Avatar.
WTuenjai Deetes, formerly Tuenjai Kunjara na Ayudhya, (Thailand) received the Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992, and was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1994. Deetes has worked with Thai hill tribes since the early-1970s. She co-founded the Hill Area Development Foundation in 1986. She is a former commissioner of the Human Rights Commission until she resigned that post in July 2019.
WEzzat Ebrahim-Nejad was an Iranian student, poet and demonstrator who was shot and killed in the attack by security forces on Tehran University dormitory that preceded and provoked the July 1999 student riots in Iran.
WHind Al-Eryani is a Yemini activist and journalist. She advocates for women's rights, Gay Rights, and peace in Yemen, and has written many articles in support of the topics. She has also fought against khat, a drug-like substance.
WAbolfazl Ghadyani is a senior member of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution of Iran Organization.
WKang Pan-sŏk was the mother of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. She came from the village of Chilgol and raised Kim on a small farm in Mangyongdae, both near Pyongyang. She accepted, but rarely participated in her husband's pro-independence activism. After the family fled to Manchuria to avoid arrest, she did not return to Korea. 21 April is a day of memorial for her in North Korea, when a wreath-laying ceremony is held at Chilgol Revolutionary Site.
WKoko Tanimoto is a prominent atomic bomb survivor, and is the daughter of Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister famous for his work for the Hiroshima Maidens. Both appear in John Hersey's book, Hiroshima.
WLeng Ouch is a Cambodian climate activist. He spent his early childhood in the forests in Cambodia and became an activist against illegal logging in Cambodia's forests. He is best known for going undercover to record illegal logging activities in his home country.
WGladys Veronica Li, QC, SC, is a former Barrister in England, a Senior Counsel at the Hong Kong Bar with a constitutional law and human rights practice, and a founding member of the Hong Kong Civic Party.
WSister Mary John Mananzan is a Missionary Benedictine nun, activist, educator, theologian, and author. She helped develop an Asian feminist theology of liberation. She currently ministers as superior of the Manila community and member of the Priory Council.
WTeten Masduki is an Indonesian social activist involved in public clearinghouse for information about corruption, collusion, and nepotism of Indonesia. He was awarded Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2005. He was appointed as the Minister for Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises in the Onward Indonesia Cabinet in October 2019.
WTeruaki Masumoto is the secretary general of the Japanese Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, which advocates for the return of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea and calls for the Japanese government to impose sanctions on the country. His older sister Rumiko is one of the victims. On February 1, 2007, he married actress Yuuko Wakamiya. in May 2012 he testified at North Korean human rights in European Parliament about his sister and other abductees including Megumi Yokota and Yaeko Taguchi
WShahindokht Molaverdi is an Iranian academic, feminist, jurist, scholar and aide to the President of Iran. She served as vice president for women and family affairs in Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's first cabinet (2013–17). In Rouhani's second cabinet (2017–present) she became his special assistant for citizenship rights.
WZahra Nejadbahram is an Iranian journalist, women's rights activist and reformist politician who currently serves as a member of the City Council of Tehran. She is the first woman to serve as deputy governor in Iran since the Iranian Revolution, having been appointed as the deputy governor of Tehran Province in July 2001.
WNguyễn Thiện Thuật was a Vietnamese revolutionary leader, who commanded armed forces during the anti-colonial struggle.
WTamar Pelleg-Sryck is an Israeli lawyer (R) and human rights activist. She is known for the help of Palestinian detainees.
WPhạm Hồng Thái (1896–1924) was a Vietnamese activist, revolutionary and a member of Đông Du. He was responsible for the assassination attempt on Martial Merlin, the governor-general of French Indochina then visiting Guangzhou, China.
WKhanlar Safaraliyev was an Azerbaijani oil field worker, labor organizer, and Moslem social democrat. In 1907, he helped lead a successful strike at the Baku oil fields. Subsequently, he was shot by an assassin, Jafar, and died several days later. The Bibi Eybat District Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, declared a general two-day strike and unsuccessfully demanded that the Baku Oil & Gas Producers Association cease protecting Khanlar's murderer, and also the manager, Abuzarbek, who allegedly assisted in the assassination. 20,000 workers demonstrated at Khanlar's funeral.
WProfessor Abdulaziz Y. Al-Saqqaf was a Yemeni human-rights activist, economist, and journalist. Saqqaf established the Yemen Times, unified Yemen's first and most widely read English-language independent newspaper, in 1991, and was the winner of the N.P.C.'s International Award for Freedom of the Press for 1995. He was also a leading economist at the state-owned Sana'a University. He won the lifetime Achievement Award of the 2006 Middle East Publishing Conference in recognition of his efforts in promoting freedom of the press in Yemen and in the region. Dr. Saqqaf was killed in 1999 when he was hit by a car. Despite appeals by Dr. Saqqaf's heirs to re-open an investigation into the accident due to indicators that it may have been a carefully coordinated assassination, the authorities in 1999 refused to do so, resulting in a withdrawal from the trial proceedings against the car driver. Saqqaf's elder son Walid and younger daughter Nadia, who currently runs the Yemen Times, have mentioned on more than one occasion that they believe the accident was orchestrated due to their father's frequent critical writings against the former president of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh.
WPolan Sarkar was a Bangladeshi social activist. He received the Ekushey Padak for social service from the Government of Bangladesh in 2011. He started a social movement of distributing books for free. He is known as “Alor Ferrywala,” the distributor of light.
WAbdullah Abu Sayeed is a Bangladeshi educator, writer, television presenter, and activist. He is the founder and chairman of Bishwa Sahitya Kendra, a non-profit organization that promotes the study of literature, reading habits and progressive ideas.
WKyuzo Toyama was an Okinawan political activist. He is commonly referred to as the "father of Okinawan emigration" due to his work in sending Okinawans abroad.
WMaheswary Velautham was a founder of Forum for Human Dignity a non-governmental organization, and a human rights lawyer activist from Jaffna, Sri Lanka. She was known for tracking the status of returned failed refugee claimants from other countries to Sri Lanka particularly the West. According to pro-rebel Tamilnet news service she was killed by unknown gunmen on May 13, 2008 at her residence in the Jaffna peninsula. The government and Eelam People's Democratic Party to whose leader she had sometimes functioned as an advisor on Human Rights issues blamed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for her murder.Former EPDP member and aide to Douglas Devananda S.Ponnaiah claimed at a press conference in Jaffna Press Club that journalist Mylvaganam Nimalrajan, Atputharajah Nadarajah, K. S. Raja and Maheswary Velautham were killed by the EPDP for personal reasons.
WWang Youcai is a Chinese dissident and was one of the prominent student leaders in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Then a graduate student at the Peking University, he was arrested in 1989 and sentenced to four years in 1991 for "conspiring to overthrow the Government of China".
WAnton Wicky (アントン・ウィッキー) is an educator and celebrity in Japan. His full name is Anton Wicky Ampalavanar. He was born in Ceylon and went to Japan in 1961 as a Mombusho scholar. In 1969 he earned a doctorate from the University of Tokyo. His teaching career has included Ohu and Reitaku Universities.
WHirofumi Yamashita was a Japanese ichthyologist and environmentalist.
WZeng Jinyan, is a Chinese blogger and human rights activist. The wife of AIDS and environmental activist Hu Jia, Zeng became famous for a blog she had maintained throughout the disappearance of her husband, which was believed to be the working of China's secret police. Zeng was put under house arrest in August 2006 and the blog that details her life under constant surveillance and police harassment has been subsequently blocked in China. Zeng continued to update her blog until July 27, 2008, before her disappearance.