Word: horta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...civil-rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson reiterated the right to self-determination and the importance of an immediate ceasefire before any political solutions can follow. Similar expressions of concern uttered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as the president of East Timor and Noble Peace laureate José Ramos-Horta, remain meaningless to the government of Sri Lanka, which considers the systematic subjugation of Tamils the only solution to decades of racial tension...
...side. The people of Timor are on my side.' JOSE RAMOS-HORTA, President of East Timor, before returning to Dili, the nation's capital, to resume his presidential duties two months after being shot in a failed assassination attempt...
...those early warnings, including riots across Dili in 2002, did not convince foreign peacekeepers - desperate to proclaim success and not to appear as occupiers - to stay longer. By 2005, most Australian soldiers went home, even though East Timor's leaders, including Ramos-Horta, had begged them not to leave too quickly. By 2006, the cracks in East Timorese society were impossible to miss. I visited the country that year and as I drove its length, passing pristine white beaches, lonely scuba divers and dilapidated Portuguese mansions, I met intensely angry former guerrilla fighters, some of whom had been sacked from...
...After taking power in last year's presidential election, Ramos-Horta laid plans to address East Timor's many problems. He vowed to focus on reconciliation after the 2006 riots, and promised to remake the security forces to make them representative of East Timorese from both the east and west ends of the country - an acrimonious ethnic divide. But rogue militias are still around, and the police are still drawn mainly from just the west side. Moreover, unemployment is rising ever higher, the judiciary remains weak, and thousands of refugees who fled past fighting continue to languish in makeshift camps...
...that the Australians have returned to provide temporary stability, Ramos-Horta, when he recovers, and Gusmão must move quickly and simultaneously on several fronts. They can draw on the money that will flow in from East Timor's offshore oil reserves to create a New Deal kind of job corps for former fighters and young gang members. They should implement an aggressive demobilization program. They should rapidly shore up East Timor's institutions by reducing the use of Portuguese and recruiting international judges and lawyers for the courts. Only then can there be real peace. And only then...