RI confused over Nobel choices<\/p>\n
By Dino Patti Djalal<\/p>\n
LONDON (JP): On Dec. 10 in snowy Oslo, Norway, the Nobel Peace
\nPrize will go to two men who have been involved in the events of
\nEast Timor: Bishop Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos Horta.<\/p>\n
The Nobel Committee got it half right. Bishop Belo is widely
\nrecognized as a significant force in reconciliation -- a process
\nwe all want to see develop. He is also an accepted figure among
\nEast Timorese of different political persuasions.<\/p>\n
But most Indonesians find it perplexing that the Nobel
\nCommittee paired these two opposite personalities for such a
\nprestigious prize. Indeed, their apparent confusion over the
\nhistory of East Timor may, in the long run, cause more harm than
\ngood.<\/p>\n
There are several reasons why Indonesians feel bewildered that
\nthis year's Nobel Peace Prize is being shared by Jose Ramos
\nHorta.<\/p>\n
The first reason is that they see Ramos Horta's passionate
\ncall for referendum, democracy and human rights as being
\ninconsistent with his past, for these were precisely things that
\nwere associated with the brief rule of Fretilin in 1975. On Nov.
\n28, 1975, Ramos Horta and his gun-totting Fretilin colleagues
\nunilaterally declared East Timor's \"independence\" and formed the
\nso-called Democratic Republic of East Timor. Apparently, Ramos
\nHorta and the elite members of the Fretilin central committee
\nthought they had the exclusive right, more so than the people of
\nEast Timor, to determine what was to become of East Timor. They
\ndid not bother to wait for a referendum or elections, nor did
\nthey make the slightest effort to verify whether this was what
\nthe East Timorese wanted. East Timorese of other political
\npersuasions -- Apodeti (Popular Democratic Association of
\nTimorese) and the Timorese Democratic Union -- surely wanted
\ndifferent things. But Fretilin, blinded by power, offered them
\nnot a ballot box but blazing guns: thousands of East Timorese,
\nincluding Apodeti and Timorese Democratic Union members, were
\nmassacred as Fretilin forces waged a campaign of terror against
\ntheir political opponents. Given this, is it any wonder that
\nwhatever Ramos Horta has to say today about democracy, human
\nrights and referendum is dismissed by his East Timorese political
\nopponents as hypocrisy?<\/p>\n
Ramos Horta now claims he was away during the civil war. It is
\ntrue he spent a few weeks in Australia (mostly in Darwin) during
\nthe few months of Fretilin rule, but the fact is that for much of
\nthe time (until he left for good on Dec. 4, 1975) he was in East
\nTimor: he knew of the atrocities, and he was very much in command
\nof Fretilin. In fact, in many of his speaking tours throughout
\nthat period, he continued to praise and justify Fretilin
\npolicies.<\/p>\n
As a key leader of Fretilin at the time, Horta is morally and
\npolitically responsible for Fretilin's brutal policies. Until
\nnow, 20 years after the Fretilin massacres, Horta has not
\napologized or expressed regret over these atrocities.<\/p>\n
Indonesians also feel the Nobel Committee was seriously
\nmisinformed when it praised Horta's \"significant contribution
\nthrough the reconciliation talks\". For the sheer irony is that
\nthe concept of \"reconciliation\" was not known as Horta's
\nintellectual brainchild or political trademark.<\/p>\n
The reconciliation process was initiated in early 1993 by two
\nEast Timorese, former Fretilin president Dr. Abilio Araujo and
\nIndonesian ambassador Lopes da Cruz. They both gathered scores of
\nEast Timorese who once sought their mutual annihilation (during
\nthe 1975 civil war) and who they have not met since. These East
\nTimorese -- coming from East Timor, Jakarta, Portugal, Macao and
\nAustralia -- met twice in the UK: first in December 1993 and
\nlater in October 1994. Ramos Horta was never part of these
\nmeetings. In fact, to the dismay of the reconciliation group,
\nHorta opposed this process and repeatedly besmirched their effort
\nto reconcile, calling it \"a gimmick\" and \"a farce\".<\/p>\n
In 1995, the UN took over the idea and launched the All East
\nTimorese Dialogue (AIETD), which Horta and his group joined. The
\nreconciliation group at first tried to mold the AIETD into an
\nextension of their London-based reconciliation talks. Horta
\nflatly rejected this idea. The reconciliation group insisted the
\nAIETD be conceived as an event for reconciliation. This was also
\nopposed by Horta.<\/p>\n
Hence, the East Timorese from the reconciliation group
\nrightfully feel stunned that credit for their most prized effort
\nshould be given away freely by the Nobel Committee to the very
\nman who has opposed reconciliation every step of the way. The
\nfact that the Nobel Committee referred to the AIETD as
\n\"reconciliation talks\" (which is definitely not the way Horta
\nsees it) while praising Ramos Horta's \"significant contribution\"
\nto this process, does raise questions of the extent to which the
\nNobel Committee has misunderstood the whole picture. Dr. Abilio
\nAraujo, the co-promoter of reconciliation, stated that the Nobel
\nCommittee \"committed an error\" in inviting Horta to share the
\nNobel prize with Bishop Belo, and stated that \"far from deepening
\ndialog, (the Nobel prize to Horta) will contribute to the
\npolarization of the Timorese leaders and open up old wounds that
\nwe all had thought healed\".<\/p>\n
Indonesians also question what the Nobel Committee describes
\nas Ramos Horta's \"significant contribution\" through \"his peace
\nplan for the region\". The East Timor conflict is 20 years old,
\nand there have been plenty of proposed schemes from many quarters
\nfor a political solution. Horta too has come up with a \"peace
\nplan\". This, however, is not the same as having \"contributed to
\npeace\" in a politically tangible way.<\/p>\n
For comparison's sake, take Richard Holbrooke, one of this
\nyear's candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. Holbrooke worked out
\nan imaginative peace plan for Bosnia which finally met the hard-
\nwon consent of the warring parties, and ended one of the most
\nviolent human catastrophes in recent years. In contrast, Horta's
\n\"peace plan\" has not been supported by any government or the UN,
\nand no East Timorese political groups outside his faction have
\nendorsed it. Horta's \"peace plan\" is also not on the agenda of
\nthe tripartite negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal under
\nthe auspices of the UN Security Council, which is internationally
\nrecognized as the sole forum to settle the East Timor question.
\nAs things stand, it is extremely unlikely that Indonesia would
\nsuccumb to Horta's long-standing demand that he be included in
\nthe formal negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal, nor is it
\nconceivable that Indonesia would be receptive to Ramos Horta's
\n\"peace plan\". To think, for instance, that Indonesia would ever
\naccept Horta's \"plan\" for the installment of UN administration in
\nEast Timor (similar to what United Nations Transitional Authority
\nin Cambodia did) and agree to eject the current provincial
\ngovernment and regional House of Representatives is, to put it
\nmildly, quite unrealistic.<\/p>\n
Will the Nobel prize contribute to the resolution of the
\nconflict, as the Nobel Committee hoped?<\/p>\n
The Nobel event will likely stimulate an aggressive publicity
\noffensive against Indonesia on the East Timor issue, and Ramos
\nHorta, with his Nobel badge, will be at the center of it.<\/p>\n
But no amount of publicity will solve the East Timor question.
\nThe New Order diplomatic history shows that conflicts are best
\ndealt with by cool heads who incrementally develop confidence and
\ncommon understanding on the basis of mutual commitment to working
\nout a rational solution. There is the worrying possibility that
\nthe Nobel event might switch the mode of dialog from solution
\nfinding to a propaganda war. In the process, confidence will be
\nbattered, confrontation intensified and positions harden. At the
\nend of the day, the East Timor issue will see a thousand
\nheadlines but not an inch of substantive progress.<\/p>\n
Francis Sejersted, the Nobel Committee's chairman, is right in
\npointing out that East Timor should not be \"a forgotten
\nconflict\". Now, the more important question is whether all of us
\ncan remember it properly.<\/p>\n
The writer is an Indonesian diplomat currently based in
\nLondon. The views expressed here are strictly personal.<\/p>",
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