Word: horta
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...issue uniting Bishop Belo and Ramos-Horta is that both want to see the backs of their Indonesian colonizers. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to both is a vindication of their courageous struggle for peace and justice. TOM HYLAND, Director East Timor-Ireland Solidarity Campaign Dublin...
...Jose Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was probably the most important day in the history of East Timor [WORLD, Oct. 21]. After more than 20 years of Indonesian occupation, the country and the East Timorese deserved this award. Now the world can no longer pretend that conflict in East Timor does not exist. MARGARIDA SERRA Odivelas, Portugal...
...mentioned the struggle that led to East Timor's declaration of independence and emphasized the (flimsy) differences between Ramos-Horta and Bishop Belo concerning the future of their country. However, you failed to report two key pieces of information: that more than 100,000 and possibly as many as 200,000 East Timorese have died of violence, disease or starvation under Indonesian rule since 1975, and that the Portuguese government transferred the legal representation of the Timorese people to the independent Republic of East Timor in 1975. No country but Australia has formally recognized the annexation of East Timor...
Indonesia immediately decried the choice of Ramos-Horta. In 1975, at the age of 25, the former newsman became "foreign minister" of a government formed by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, or Fretilin, which slaughtered card-holding members of four other political parties following Portugal's withdrawal from its former colony. Indonesia's invasion the following month sent most Fretilin leaders into exile. Ramos-Horta advocates Fretilin's peace plan: a two-year pullback of Indonesian troops and an eventual U.N.-sponsored referendum on self-rule. "We, the East Timorese, are offering an olive branch to Indonesia...
Belo believes Fretilin's savagery is neither forgotten nor forgiven. While he still advocates a referendum, the bishop is not as confident as Ramos-Horta seems to be about its outcome. Many East Timorese, he says, may even choose union with Indonesia. He offers an alternative to a potentially violent referendum: East Timor as an Indonesian province with special autonomy...