Honor or disgrace?
Whether it be by chance or by design, this year's Nobel prizes for peace are to be presented to the recipients today to coincide with the commemoration of International Human Rights Day. For Indonesians, perhaps there is reason to reflect on this peculiar combination of circumstances. Many Indonesians, no doubt, must view this year's Nobel Peace Prize awards with mixed feelings.
On the one hand, Indonesians should have reason to be proud. For the first time in history, Indonesians have been found by the Nobel Committee to be worthy of receiving this most coveted token of world recognition: the Nobel Peace Prize. Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, this year's recipients, are after all native sons of East Timor, the 27th province of Indonesia.
As has been said before, however, while few Indonesians question the selection of Belo -- nobody can dispute the fact that besides being a reasonable man, he has been tireless in his work to promote peace and respect for human rights in East Timor -- it is the fact that he must share the honor with the self- exiled separatist leader Ramos Horta that makes many Indonesians doubt the good judgment of the Nobel Committee.
In the view of many Indonesians, far from being a messenger of peace, Ramos Horta has by his actions made peace even more elusive for the people of East Timor. As a leader of Fretilin, he was co-responsible for setting off the bloody civil war that ravaged the territory around 1975 and, as has been noted before, Fretilin's human rights record hardly justifies the awarding of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to such a leader. Ramos Horta's actions in recent years have not helped to promote the United Nations-sponsored negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal to achieve a peaceful settlement of the East Timor issue.
However that may be, such considerations are of little relevance at this point. The Nobel Committee surely had considerations of its own which it regarded as correct in picking its candidates from among the long list of contenders. The awards are to be presented to the recipients today and there is nothing we can do aside from living with the fact, whether we like it or not.
Under the circumstances, we believe the most productive course we could take at the moment is to take a good look at ourselves and try to see where we went wrong. We could then determine how we could remedy any mistakes that we might have made. It is imperative that we realize we are living in a shrinking world, in which increased contacts and exchanges of all sorts, including of values and ideas between peoples, are unavoidable.
In conclusion, we believe tha} rather than continue to brood over what has already transpired, we would do much better trying to use this moment to our advantage by drawing a lesson from it. If it is true that things need improving in East Timor, we believe it is not too late to set things straight, however complicated the task may appear to be.