Subject: SCMP: E. Timor's 'voice of independence'
faces greatest challenge
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 09:01:45 +0000
From: "John M. Miller" <fbp@igc.apc.org>Received from Joyo Indonesian
News:
also: 'Global pressure forces Jakarta to bend on visa'; and 'Gusmao, Ramos Horta
joining talks'
South China Morning Post Saturday, June 26, 1999
EAST TIMOR
'Voice of independence' finally faces greatest challenge
Photo: Now and then: Jose Ramos Horta today and in 1976.
VAUDINE ENGLAND
Every international cause needs someone like Jose Ramos Horta - a man who is prepared
to talk day and night, anywhere in the world, to anyone, about the cause he holds dear.
Love him or loathe him, he has been the dominant voice for East Timorese independence,
making a full-time career out of denouncing the invasion and annexation of his homeland by
Indonesia.
Forums he has used include the United Nations Security Council, the UN Commission on
Human Rights, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the European Parliament.
For Mr Ramos Horta, this dedication has earned him a Nobel peace prize, shared with
Bishop Carlos Belo, in 1996, and a lifestyle involving "homes" in Sydney, Lisbon
and New York which he rarely sees. A son and former wife live in Mozambique.
It has also earned him the intense dislike of the Indonesian authorities - which he not
only takes as a compliment but which he uses to support his exile, if not martyr, status.
Along the way, Mr Ramos Horta has joined that growing crowd of international advocates
for human rights, self-determination, democracy, the environment and much more.
"I have been travelling for 23 years, back and forth," he said in February.
"I have been dealing with the East Timorese issue, but I have many other interests.
"I have dealt with many other situations, with mediating a hostage situation in
Colombia a few months ago, and recently I was invited to Iraq but I refused. This is only
to say I have been dealing with dictators' regimes in many places."
Mr Ramos Horta was born in 1949 in Dili, of a Timorese mother and a Portuguese father.
Of his 11 siblings, four were killed by the Indonesian military.
Following a family tradition, he was first banned from his homeland in 1970 and sent to
Mozambique for allegations against the Portuguese regime.
After a stint as a journalist back in East Timor, he was mandated by the
pro-independence parties to represent East Timor abroad. He left the island three days
before the Indonesian troops invaded, arriving in New York in December 1975 to address the
UN Security Council.
He was permanent representative of the pro-independence Fretilin to the UN for 10
years, and the personal representative-at-large of detained resistance leader Xanana
Gusmao.
He has nurtured a worldwide network of sympathisers, fund-givers and diplomats for the
East Timorese independence cause. Now he faces perhaps his biggest challenge - applying
his passion to the very different environment of Indonesia.
-------------
South China Morning Post Saturday, June 26, 1999
EAST TIMOR
Global pressure forces Jakarta to bend on visa
VAUDINE ENGLAND
The planned arrival of Mr Ramos Horta in Jakarta today shows the extent of
international pressure on Jakarta to satisfactorily resolve the problem of East Timor.
Indonesia has long held off granting Mr Ramos Horta the visa he needs to land in either
Jakarta or East Timor, and pro-Indonesia groups in East Timor have recently fought hard
against the right of any exiled Timorese to go home before the planned UN ballot on
autonomy in August.
"The Indonesian Government will not give a visa to Ramos Horta," Indonesian
Foreign Minister Ali Alatas told journalists before a cabinet meeting little over a week
ago.
"If he tries to come in, he must take full responsibility for the
consequences".
"Oh, definitely I will return," Mr Ramos Horta said earlier this year.
"[Detained guerilla leader] Xanana [Gusmao] wants me to go down to Jakarta whenever
possible. I'm under his orders. If he wants me to come to Jakarta, I'll come.
"If the Indonesians do allow me to go to Jakarta, then it would be highly symbolic
because many people, including Xanana, say that they hate me more than they hate Xanana. I
can understand the sentiment.
"But if I did go it would be with humility, with only one thing in mind, that is
really trying, with Xanana, to engage them [the Indonesian Government] in serious
dialogue, to find an honourable exit for Indonesia."
Indonesian officials have claimed the UN agreement on East Timor's transition, signed
in New York in May, did not provide for exiles to be so active.
But Western diplomats have argued publicly for the right of Mr Ramos Horta and any
other exile not only to visit East Timor and Indonesia, but also to campaign ahead of the
ballot.
Now that Indonesia has consented to Mr Ramos Horta's presence in the capital, officials
are trying to assert some face-saving element of control over a man who has spent his life
in virulent denunciation of Jakarta.
"We have given him a visa, but on one condition," an Indonesian consular
official said. "He must not campaign."
Asked how campaigning could be defined, in the case of someone as vocal as Mr Ramos
Horta, the official smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
----------
Saturday, June 26, 1999
EAST TIMOR
Gusmao, Ramos Horta joining talks
Photo: A little fan-fare: an East Timorese youngster waves shyly as the helicopter
bearing the United Nations Secretary-General's special representative for East Timor,
Jamsheed Marker, lifts the diplomat away from the town of Liquisa, west of the capital,
Dili, yesterday. Reuters photo
VAUDINE ENGLAND
Church-led reconciliation discussions began in Jakarta yesterday between
representatives of pro-Indonesian and pro-independence East Timorese. Barring a
last-minute hitch, exiled independence spokesman Jose Ramos Horta will arrive from
Singapore today to join the talks.
He will be stepping on to Indonesian soil for the first time since December 1975 to be
united with his resistance comrade Xanana Gusmao.
Yesterday's talks began after a two-hour delay caused by late approval for the
attendance of Gusmao, who is under house arrest following his release from a 20-year jail
term for treason.
Called Dare II, the talks, at a hotel near Jakarta's Sukarno-Hatta airport, are led by
East Timorese bishops Carlos Belo and Basilio do Nascimento who, along with 24 East Timor
politicians, arrived in Jakarta two days ago.
The goal of the talks is peaceful reconciliation between East Timorese factions which
have been fighting each other for decades.
Supporters and opponents of independence for East Timor wound up the first of six days
of talks yesterday by agreeing on the need for reconciliation between them for the future.
"In the concluding plenary session, both sides reached basic agreement on the
necessity and definition of reconciliation," the spokesman of the steering committee
for the church-organised talks, Father Domingos Sequeira, said.
The talks come less than two months ahead of a planned UN-supervised ballot in which
East Timorese can vote on a Jakarta-backed scheme for comprehensive autonomy. Independence
has been promised if the proposal is rejected.
The Indonesian Embassy in Canberra, as well as granting Mr Ramos Horta a visa, also
allowed in Mari Alkatiri, another exiled pro-independence leader, and three other
prominent exiles.
Gusmao's lawyer, Johnson Panjaitan, said as the talks began that Gusmao "is
optimistic; he believes this meeting is interesting".
The first two days of the two-stage talks involve people from East Timor, while the
second, four-day stint, will begin tomorrow with participants from abroad.
Supporting Gusmao, head of the National Resistance Council of East Timor, the umbrella
organisation of the East Timorese pro-independence movement, are two of its leaders, David
Ximenes and Leandro Isaac.
The pro-Indonesia faction is represented by the head of the Front for Peace, Freedom
and Democracy, Domingos Soares, its spokesman Basilio Araujo, Fransisco Xavier Lopez da
Cruz, who chairs the Front of the People of East Timor, and parliamentarian Armindo Soares
Mariano.
Among topics for discussion will be a code of conduct for the poll, reconciliation and
the kind of future envisaged by the East Timorese.
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