Speech of H.E. the Senior Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and
Cooperation of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste,
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. José Ramos-Horta at Heinrich Boell
Foundation, Berlin, 29 November 2002:

"Can Timor-Leste Become a Model for Successful Conflict Resolution?"

Thank you so much, Madam, for your kind words and for the invitation
extended to me to be here today. I thank the distinguished ambassadors and
friends for being here.
I was asked to address a topic which is whether - East Timor can serve as a
model in conflict management. I might not necessarily satisfy the
requirements of this topic but I will maybe just share our experience, our
views and you can, from that, derive to any conclusion.

Just a few weeks ago I was accompanying President Xanana Gusmão to the
United Nations and to Washington for a meeting with President Bush. And
some journalists asked President Xanana Gusmão: "Are you going to raise the
issue of Iraq with President Bush?" And President Xanana Gusmão responded
in this way: "And do you think President Bush is going to worry about my
opinion on Iraq?"
Well, actually President Bush began our discussion by a very forceful
introduction about his views on the situation in Iraq. Of course, he didn't
necessarily have in mind to ask President Xanana Gusmão to comment on that
- but this is only to emphasise our own awareness, our own consciousness
that we are an extremely minuscule player in the region and in world
affairs. So it doesn't mean - not necessarily - that countries in the
region or in the world are going to be too concerned about how we think of
the matters in the region.
But if we can - through our own efforts in our country, in Timor- Leste -
first consolidate peace and security, build democratic institutions in the
country, develop a truly tolerant democratic, pluralistic society based on
rule of law, then we can say we have done our bit. Because, if there is a
half-island that is peaceful, that is tolerant, if there is a half-island
in the world that has addressed seriously the issue of poverty or of
domestic violence, that has brought clean water, electricity to its people,
maybe that is already a small contribution we can make to the rest of the
world - without necessarily having the ambition to do much more than that.
So I can start by saying that first our primary concern and our primary
obligation - not only to our people but also to the region and to the
international community - is how we build our country, how we satisfy the
needs, the expectations of the people, how successful we are in building
strong democratic institutions, checks and balances, so that corruption and
abuse do not invade East Timorese society.

Yesterday our President Xanana Gusmão made a very forceful speech. Quite
unusual - for many observers, they would say - for a President to be so
forceful in criticising the government. He actually demanded the
resignation of a cabinet minister. And I am saying that because it has been
all over in the media and I have been asked to comment. Some people are
worried - you know - about the tensions, the conflict between the
presidency and the government, the government and the parliament. Not to
mention the tensions between the government and our very active,
increasingly active, vocal NGO community. Our Prime Minister becomes
increasingly irritated with our NGO community. Well, but these are all the
necessary and the healthy aspects of democracy. The tensions that exist are
there. They are no secrets. Between the President and the government, and
between the government and the parliament - even though the government has
majority control in the parliament. The government can easily push any
legislation it wants through the parliament because it has the clear
majority, plus it has the support of two other parties. So it could do
anything it wants. But the government found out, the Prime Minister found
out, that even his own parliamentarians are very independent-minded. That
they don't necessarily always follow the Prime Minister's wishes. So our
Prime Minister gets even more irritated with this development. And I find
this whole situation very interesting, healthy. Why not? Why wouldn't the
President become the spokesperson of the concerns of the people? Why
wouldn't he speak out? Why wouldn't he put pressure, constant pressure, on
the government? And so these are the tensions that are there. I wouldn't
say that our Prime Minister and a few others who worked with him and
international experts on the constitution, we planned it deliberately in
such a way to really have a system of a balance. Maybe there was some
miscalculation by our Prime Minister. He didn't think that the President -
you know - could become so independent-minded or maybe he didn't think that
his own parliamentarians would become so independent-minded. Maybe it was
not calculated but the fact, the end result is positive: It's positive that
we have these tensions between the President and the government and the
parliament. Because this means: No one has monopoly on power - and with
temptation of using and abusing power.
The way the constitution was drafted and voted on by the people gives
enough checks and balances, division of power between the various branches
of our government. Of course, on top of it we have a President who is
extremely popular. The single most popular individual in the country is the
President with an enormous moral authority. So he is able to exercise this
very special role to make sure that we as a whole, we those who are in
government and in other political functions, do not betray the expectation,
the dreams, the sacrifices of so many people.
Our bishop to make things even more dramatic - one of our bishops, Bishop
Belo who shared the Nobel Prize with me also, - resigned a few days ago. He
invoked health reasons. Some media speculated that he has resigned because
of some conflict with the Vatican over - I don't know: theological or
biblical interpretation of human phenomena? I've no idea. The fact of the
matter is that he resigned. I was not there on the moment of his
resignation. I cannot really share with you how our people reacted. But
from my conversation on the phone there was tremendous calm, serenity in
the country. Bishop Belo probably has genuine health concerns. As you know
he was the leader of the church for so many years in extremely difficult
circumstances. And probably he feels that he has to leave and he left. That
the way the people reacted in a very calm, serene way, shows also the
strength of the church, shows the positive legacy of the Bishop. That when
he decided to leave there is no commotion. There a many priests, church
leaders in East Timor who will be able to continue on the extraordinary
role that Bishop Belo played in the past. Sharing with you these two
particular events - the dramatic speech of our President criticising the
government, demanding the resignation of a cabinet minister, and Bishop
Belo's resignation - is only to say that a few months after our
independence, the hand-over of sovereignty of East Timor, we are going
through still a very dynamic democratic process with enormous popular
participation.

We have twelve parties in the parliament - the largest is the Fretilin
historical party. And there are thirty per cent women in the parliament,
the largest number of women in any parliament in the region. And the
average of the European Union parliaments is eighteen per cent. Only
Norway, Sweden, Finland - maybe the Nordic countries - have a higher
percentage of women in parliament.

We have also a very dynamic media- not necessarily always very responsible.
If you want to find the more imaginative media in the world, go to East
Timor. They make up interviews, the make up stories. If they didn't do an
interview with the Minister, they make up the interview. This is an area
where one can train our journalists. Please come and do as many trainings
as you can. In East Timor they need to learn to write properly, they need
to learn not to make up stories, they need to learn to do serious
investigative reporting rather than just making up accusations against
different individuals. We need real training for our print media
particularly. Radio, electronic and television is slightly better because
they cannot make up stories, you know, people are watching, people are
listening. But the print media has this advantage over all the others that
they can make up totally non-existent facts. But I don't want to offend the
German print media. I don't want to create any enemies among the German
print media. I am talking about our specific experience in East Timor.

Our judiciary is also one aspect of our administration that is not the most
successful so far. Our courts hardly function and that has mostly to do
with the fact that in the whole country we have very, very few trained
lawyers, trained prosecutors. That doesn't mean necessarily that lawyers
are the best invention of humanity. But in East Timor we really lack
qualified, trained lawyers. Our courts really don't function. We have
general support from many countries - from Portugal, from Cape Verde, from
Brazil - and the United Nations through UNDP is searching out for more
prosecutors and judges to make up for our problems there.
My point is only to share with you that, in these few months, we have
learned through our mistakes and weaknesses the enormous challenge of
governance.

At the same time as we do that, we try to create an economy where it did
not exist to meet the rising demand and expectation of the people.

And at the same time we are working towards normalisation of relations with
Indonesia, developing relations with our neighbours, being an active
participant in the United Nations system.

I move on to the next point that I want to make and that is our relations
with Indonesia.
In July this year President Xanana Gusmão paid a state visit to Indonesia.
As I was there with the President and other colleagues I could not help but
being overwhelmed and touched by the warmth, the reception accorded to
President Xanana Gusmão. Obviously, as we all know, East Timor went through
twenty-five years of violence, of suffering, of humiliation. But at the
same time you can also understand the other side - and that is that for
Indonesia also it was a humiliating experience, when in '99 it was forced
to leave the country. And it needs quite a lot of courage for the other
side to acknowledge the irreversibility, the reality of Timor-Leste's
independence, and so soon after the traumatic events of '99 to seek to meet
us half way in normalising relations. In this regard the Indonesian side,
starting with President Gus Dur - Abdurrahman Wahid - and with Megawati
Sukarnoputri, have shown real leadership and statesmanship.
We have established a joined commission, interministerial, that has had its
first meeting in October in Jakarta. And - working with Indonesia, with
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines - we have
launched a new subregional organisation called the South West Pacific
Dialogue. And that is an Indonesian initiative which we inaugurated also …
in October in Yogyakarta. The agenda of the new subregional organisation is
subregional cooperation on security issues, people smuggling, drug
trafficking , human trafficking, but it is also to address security
cooperation to deal with the terrorist threat and so on.

We are opening an embassy in Jakarta. We have already some diplomats there.
The embassy will start functioning in January. Indonesia has an embassy in
Timor. We are working to continue to strengthen relations with Indonesia,
in particular to develop trade and economic cooperation between Timor-Leste
and Eastern Indonesia, the islands, the provinces that are nearest to East
Timor.

We have also established relations with all ASEAN countries. Some of them
have embassies in East Timor. We have embassies from Malaysia, Indonesia,
Thailand and soon we will have from the Philippines. President Gloria
Arroyo has told me in the Philippines recently that she will be appointing
an ambassador to East Timor.

In the region we have also strong ties with China, with Korea, with Japan;
besides Australia and New Zealand that I already mentioned. This has been
our very, very heavy agenda in the last few months.

On December 10th our parliament will ratify the most relevant, the most
important international human rights instruments making East Timor one of
the countries that is acceding to ratify the largest number of
international human rights instruments: Convention on the Rights of the
Child, Convention on Refugees, Convention against Torture and many others.
But we are not only ratifying them, we are conscious that ratification
brings also responsibility: responsibility to the people and responsibility
to the international community. We are asking UNICEF, UNHCHR, the UN
agencies and donor countries to help us publishing theses treaties - in
book-form with illustrations, appropriate for school children because we
really want to popularise the international human rights instruments and be
part and parcel of the daily discourse of the people, the daily
understanding, so that human rights, democracy become part of the culture
of the country.

I would like now to touch on one issue that has been very much in the mind
of all of us and that is the threat of terrorism in the region and in the
world. A few weeks ago I travelled through Denpasar on the way to
Singapore, Thailand and Korea. And on the way back we stopped there. It was
most heart-breaking to see the Denpasar airport almost completely empty and
we know that at least two weeks ago the hotels had less than ten per cent
occupancy.
The terrorist threat, the strategy of the terrorists is having its impact.
Their strategy is to undermine the economies and the governments of the
region. I am talking about our immediate region. Bali without tourism - if
the situation continues they will lose several hundred thousands of jobs
and certainly that undermines the stability of the government in Indonesia
as a whole and particular in Bali. And the same impact is happening in our
economies in the region. I don't know so far about the impact on Thailand
itself. But the Thai authorities - as have been the Philippines and
Singapore, Malaysia - are all worried about the impact of the terrorist
threat. President Xanana Gusmão and myself, we decided on the way back to
stop in Denpasar. We stayed there over night and went to visit the site of
the terrorist bombing. Not only to pay tribute to the victims but also to
make an appeal to tourists, to people in the region not to allow ourselves
to be hostages of the terrorists. If we allow ourselves to be hostages of
the fear they want to instil in each of us, we are doing exactly what they
want. Their strategy is to undermine the governments in the region by
undermining one of the most important sources of income for the economies
of the region.
We understand the fears of those who travel and we understand the fears of
Western governments that have to issue travel warnings to their citizens:
No government, no responsible government is prepared to be indifferent to
the terrorist threat and to ignore the need to warn their citizens. But we
must all bear in mind that tourism, the movement of people in today's
world, which involves millions and millions of people, is vital to the
economies of the world. It is not only Bali that would suffer, it's the
whole of Indonesia that would suffer. It will not be only Phuket and
Thailand. But it would affect airlines, Western airline industry. It does
affect the aeronautics industry. And it affects all the related activities
that are linked with tourism, directly or indirectly. Sometimes I have to
say frankly, sometimes when you look at some of the travel warnings you
wonder whether these travel warnings are really justified. I do not wish to
oversimplify matters. Certainly, we make our decision whether to travel to
Singapore or not, to Bali or not. But is Bali today less safe than downtown
Los Angeles? Is Bali today less safe than Columbine, Colorado? Is Bali
today less safe than the Central Park? We don't hear travel warnings about
the United States. I have taken part personally in programs in the United
States in healing victims of violence in schools. In Columbine High School:
I went there, I was asked to go there to talk with the families of the two
sides: of the children who killed, who killed their friends, their
colleagues - to talk with the community. So I am very familiar with the
scale of violence in the United States. And yet does it prevent us from
going to the United States? Either for tourist purpose or business purpose?
Are we being stopped to go to UK or to France or to Germany because of the
terrorist threat? Because everybody is under terrorist threat. The fact
that there is no travel warning in Germany, or no travel warning in Canada,
or no travel warning in the United States doesn't mean that the terrorists
are not going to strike. Bali was the one of the safest places. And that's
why maybe people were complacent about it. Then it was struck. Being
conscious, being aware of all these dangers, the threat that faces all of
us, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of the terrorists and
in the process undermine entire economies and bring even more instability
to many parts of the world.

I can talk about this issue rather objectively because, unfortunately, East
Timor is not exactly today a major tourist destination. No one is really
still going to East Timor. We are not Bali, we are not Fiji, we are not
this very famous place in Miami, Disney World or whatever.
So the terrorist threat is not really affecting East Timor but it's
heart-breaking and worrying to us observing how it is affecting economies
of the region. It is profoundly affecting that extraordinary people of
Bali. We in East Timor so far have been immune. But that doesn't mean that
Timor is escaping the terrorist threat. Osama Bin Laden - in at least two
statements he made a specific reference to East Timor. The mere fact that
Bali is a Hindu enclave in an archipelago that is predominantly… Muslim
that in itself is a target for Osama Bin Laden. Or if you are a moderate
Muslim leader you make yourself a target. East Timor by the fact it is a
predominantly Catholic enclave and according to Osama Bin Laden taken away
from Muslim Indonesia by Western crusaders and this makes East Timor a
target. We are aware, we are conscious of that. But that is not going to
stop us from continuing to build our nation through democracy, democratic
principles, institutions and tolerance. And it will not push us into
demonising every Muslim in the world, into blinding us, into falling into
the trap that the terrorist threat is a natural product of the Arab or
Muslim world. My point is that in the fight against terrorism we cannot not
at the same time allow ourselves to fall into the tap of demonising other
cultures or ethnic groups because - and speaking as a Catholic, as a
Christian: well, the history of Christianity is not exactly the most
violent-free one. If we remember our history it is not exactly the most
violent-free one. So let us not generalise and demonise others. And I want
to say one thing here in connection with this: If the East Timorese people,
if the East Timorese leaders can be proud of one that is: Never once in
twenty-four years of our struggle we demonised the Indonesian people as a
people…Although East Timor is predominantly Catholic and Indonesia is
predominantly Muslim, you never saw in our official pronouncements of any
sort any manipulation of religion as instruments of our struggle.
Unfortunately, or tragically, the Suharto regime in Indonesia could be
accused of everything. It could be accused of corruption, of nepotism, of
abuse. But it could not be accused of discrimination when it came to
violence. Everybody in Indonesia knew what was violence under Suharto
-whether you are Muslim, whether you are Hindu, whether you are Catholic
from East Timor or you are Protestant from Irian Jaya, West Papua. So we
all know what it is when it came to violence.
So, Suharto never discriminated when it came to violence. So the violence
in East Timor was not because East Timor was Catholic under Suharto and the
East Timorese people understood that very well. And that is why twenty-four
years after Indonesian occupation and after so much suffering, and still so
many people unaccounted for, normalisation of relations with Indonesia has
been very easy, very quick. There are Indonesians living in East Timor
today. Many are coming back, although Timor is the poorest country in Asia.
We have now our share of illegal migrants, many of them from Indonesia.
Partly not because we are so tolerant but because our border services are
so incompetent. They let people in and out without papers, without
passports which is a bit worrying at the moment. We do have over a thousand
of illegal migrants in East Timor. How they ended up there only our very
competent border services can explain. But the fact of the matter: They are
there and they are working illegally: street vendors, restaurants - and
there is no physical or verbal abuse against Indonesians who decided to
stay there.

I end with one message. I was asked a few weeks ago on …UN Day, 24th of
October, to talk about how East Timor can contribute to the United Nations,
to contribute to the world as member of the United Nations. I said now and
I would say today: Not much because of our smallness, our insignificance -
but we would join our voice with the voice of many developing countries,
with the NGOs around the world, in calling on the rich countries of the
North to increase further their share of the development assistance for
poor countries: to the minimum zero point seven per cent recommended by the
UN. But that is not enough either because the fifty billion dollars or so
that is contributed by the rich countries to development assistance
programs around the world is almost completely obliterated by the farming
subsidies that rich countries provide to their farmers. Three hundred
billion dollars are estimated by UNDP to be the subsidies by the rich
countries to farmers in Europe and…the United States. You have the amount
of more or less fifty billion dollars of overseas assistance … to poor
countries. You have three hundred billion dollars in farming subsidies in
rich countries. How can a small farmer somewhere in East Timor compete with
these huge subsidies?
And then we have the debt burden of the poor countries. We can add our
voice. It's not only a moral and ethical issue but it's also a matter of
pragmatism and security, a strategic consideration: Maybe it is time that
we, the world today -and as we are all shaking by the terrorist threat-,
that we realise that we have to engage - all of us - in a better dialogue,
better communication, a better vision, a greater courage, more compassion -
but not only compassion and vision - but courage and intelligence. In
looking seriously at how the rich countries can really address the issue of
poverty.

Poverty is not only a moral and ethical issue - poverty is also a security
issue. I do not obviously agree with the very simplistic notion that
terrorism is caused by poverty. That is nonsense. Saying that poverty is a
source of terrorism, or one fundamental source, is essentially an insult to
the poor of the world. Look at Sub-Saharan Africa - there is no more
neglected, more humiliated, more looted region of the world than
Sub-Saharan Africa. Going back to colonial rule, slavery, Sub-Saharan
Africa, particularly Southern Africa but also the Horn of Africa, has been
used, abused, manipulated by every major power during the cold war. And yet
you don't find local terrorist groups born, operating out of Sub-Saharan
Africa. They are victims of violence and instability from within and
without. But it challenges the notion, the myth… that poverty breeds
terrorism. But if poverty does not cause terrorism, poverty causes
instability. It bring down the governments destabilising the countries. And
that is true. And how can we create the conditions to create a better,
safer environment for everybody. For the poor and for the rich. The poor
cannot prosper without the rich. And let me assure you: The rich will not
stay always rich, if regions of the world remain poor. So it is important
to write off the debts of the poor countries. Why do the Western banks and
governments loan and loan indiscriminately knowing that there is corruption
there? Well, you are also at fault … and you collected enough. So write off
the debt, increase market access. Reduce gradually - we are not saying
reduce completely or cut off completely - the farming subsidies. You know,
we can demand, "yes, you must stop immediately farming subsidies" -but it
is not realistic. But we can expect that over a period of years… it can be
gradually reduced. So that makes our farmers more competitive with the rest
of the world. And that's what we are proposing. And we propose that a
country like Germany, the European Union, really leads a dialogue between
the various regions, communities … of the world.
In our small way, in our daily lives in East Timor we discover that
sometimes you can defuse an intractable issue through dialogue. When you
see an angry crowd, you have the courage you go and face them and invite
them to dialogue. You disarm them. So at a larger level, national or
regional level, the global level, there has to be other creative, dynamic
ways to engage the various regions that do not seem to understand each
other. How to do it? Frankly, of course, there are so many dialogue
initiatives that I am not going to invent a new one. I just want to add my
voice to those who say there has to be greater dialogue to avoid the evil
side winning the propaganda war - winning the propaganda war that Americans
are against Muslims, winning the propaganda war that Europeans are with
Americans against Muslims and vice-versa. It is not the case. That is not
true. The US is not against Muslims. When the United States refused to
intervene in Bosnia, when dragging its feet for a long time, or when Nato
countries were hesitating to intervene in Kosovo they were being criticised
by everybody. But then, when they finally intervened, they are still
criticised. Well, something wrong there. There is some miscommunication. It
is very, very important that in the fight against international terrorism
one cannot lose sight of the need for dialogue. You cannot use only
security, military approach to conflicts. You must address the issue of the
social and economic dimension. And this is in a small way our experience in
East Timor. East Timor has been labelled a success story for the UN. East
Timor, yes, it has been very much a success story and thanks to the UN. The
UN be justly praised for what is has done in East Timor. But the UN is the
sum of the parts. The parts are the member states. And the member states
contribute significantly to that. The European Union and some of its member
countries have contributed generously to East Timor, the Nordic countries,
Portugal, Ireland, the European Union as a group, Australia, New Zealand,
Japan. And different countries have - in different ways - helped to end the
violence in '99 and in the reconstruction… efforts. What Timor can show -
and I end my comments with that - is that the UN is absolutely the best
vehicle for the international community to gather together, work together,
to try to address to resolve conflict situations. This success story of
East Timor - it was not done out of to one particular country. It was a
contributing effort of many. Some say that East Timor was an Australian
imposition against Indonesia. Not true. Many Asian countries used friendly
persuasion with Indonesia in '99 to understand that it was time to leave.
The ASEAN countries played a…crucial role behind the scenes. China, Korea
and Japan. So it was a collaborative effort of many countries that ended
the violence in '99. But it was not only governments. Civil societies,
NGOs, our solidarity movement were so active, so generous, in so many parts
of the world including in Germany. What Timor offers is, yes, the lesson of
Timor is a lesson of hope, a lesson of partnership, of collaborative effort
of people of goodwill in governments and outside. Can this be replicated
elsewhere? Yes, it can. But I don't want also to simplify to say: "It
worked in one place, it works in another." There are specific realities in
each country. And one is that I advise the UN: Don't get involved, don't
waste the resources, the credibility of the UN, if local actors are not
able to have the courage to come to terms and end violence. The UN should
not jump into situations where the different factions in one given country
are not ready. Because in the end, the success story of East Timor, yes, is
tremendously due to the UN but also to the ability of the Timorese people
to bury the violence and the past. Because if the people of East Timor were
not prepared to bury their differences, no amount of peace-keeping would be
able to keep peace in the country. We ourselves must be the primary, the
number one peacemakers. The others can help, consolidate peace and rebuild
the country. But they cannot fill our hearts with compassion, with love,
when we don't have the courage to forgive, to reconcile among ourselves.
When leaders are not able to put behind them the rivalries of the past.
When leaders are not able to be inspired by the greater good of the
country, then the UN should not be there because it would not succeed. I
thank you.

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