Word: horta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even a Nobel Peace Prize can't ward off bloodshed in East Timor. President José Ramos-Horta won the award in 1996 for his tireless efforts to free his nation from a repressive occupation by Indonesia, and ever since has commanded respect both internationally and from a majority of his people. But his legacy of peace was shattered on Monday morning, when renegade East Timorese soldiers attacked his home on the outskirts of the capital, Dili, shooting Ramos-Horta at least twice in the torso. The East Timorese president was airlifted to Darwin, Australia, where hospital staff have characterized...
...Three decades ago, while some of his compatriots waged a fierce independence struggle from the jungles of East Timor, Ramos-Horta took a less violent path. The now-58-year-old, who earned a Peace Studies degree at Antioch University in the U.S., tirelessly criss-crossed the globe, campaigning for an end to Indonesia's brutal annexation of his homeland. His passionate diplomacy eventually paid off. Six years after Ramos-Horta shared the Nobel Peace Prize with East Timorese Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, East Timor finally won full independence from Indonesia, ending a traumatic occupation during which...
...After hunting former military police commander Alfredo Reinado for months, the Australian-led International Stabilization Force was recently called off the chase by President José Ramos-Horta. But speaking with TIME near his mountain redoubt, Reinado says the change of government has not changed his stance. He is still at war, he says, with Dili and with...
...Clad in Australian Army battledress, toting a machine gun and surrounded by armed bodyguards, Reinado says he will never lay down his weapons: "Why? Who does this [gun] belong to? It doesn't belong to Xanana [Gusmão, the new Prime Minister] or Horta. It belongs to the people of this country." Besides, he adds, many others have illicit weapons. "What do they do about those people...
...arming a hit squad in the lead-up to last year's unrest. And just before the June election, the Fretilin-controled parliament voted to grant amnesties or reduce sentences for serious crimes relating to the violence of 2006, although the resolution was never signed into law by Ramos-Horta. Fretilin's political opponents accuse the party of fomenting violence to achieve their political ends, but Fretilin denies the claims, conceding only that it struggles to control some of its angry supporters. NGO head Samson is unconvinced. "They are worried about what the new government will do," he says. "They...