The Most Famous
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Malaysia
This page contains a list of the greatest Malaysian Social Activists. The pantheon dataset contains 840 Social Activists, 1 of which were born in Malaysia. This makes Malaysia the birth place of the 98th most number of Social Activists behind Palestine, and Uganda.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Malaysian Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Malaysian Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Irene Fernandez (1946 - 2014)
With an HPI of 42.36, Irene Fernandez is the most famous Malaysian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages on wikipedia.
Irene Fernandez (18 April 1946 – 31 March 2014) was a Malaysian human rights activist and politician. She was a People's Justice Party (KeADILan) supreme council member and the director and co-founder of the non-governmental organization Tenaganita, which promotes the rights of migrant workers and refugees in Malaysia. In 1995, Irene Fernandez published a report on the living conditions of the migrant workers entitled "Abuse, Torture and Dehumanised Conditions of Migrant Workers in Detention Centres". The report was based in part on information given to her by Steven Gan and a team of reporters from The Sun, who had uncovered evidence that 59 inmates, primarily Bangladeshis, had died in the Semenyih immigration detention camp of the preventable diseases typhoid and beriberi. When Gan and his colleagues were blocked by Sun editors from printing the report in the paper, they passed it to Fernandez. She was arrested in 1996 and charged with 'maliciously publishing false news'. After seven years of trial, she was found guilty in 2003 and convicted to one year's imprisonment. Released on bail pending her appeal, her passport was held by the courts, and as a convicted criminal, she was barred from standing as parliamentary candidate in the 2004 Malaysian elections. In 2005, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her outstanding and courageous work to stop violence against women and abuses of migrant and poor workers". Irene Fernandez's appeal at the High Court resumed on 28 October 2008. On 24 November 2008, Justice Mohamed Apandi Ali overturned her earlier conviction and acquitted her, ending the thirteen-year case. She died on 31 March 2014 of heart failure.
2. Nisha Ayub (b. 1979)
With an HPI of 34.39, Nisha Ayub is the 2nd most famous Malaysian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Nisha Ayub (born April 5, 1979) is a Malaysian transgender rights activist. Ayub is the co-founder of the community-run SEED Foundation and transgender grassroots campaign Justice for Sisters and she was awarded the prestigious International Women of Courage Award in 2016.
People
Pantheon has 2 people classified as Malaysian social activists born between 1946 and 1979. Of these 2, 1 (50.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Malaysian social activists include Nisha Ayub. The most famous deceased Malaysian social activists include Irene Fernandez. As of April 2024, 1 new Malaysian social activists have been added to Pantheon including Irene Fernandez.
