On the Nobel Prize

On the Nobel Prize

I wish to comment on the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace
Prize for 1996 to Jose Ramos-Horta, the former chief of foreign
affairs and information for East Timor's Fretilin movement. As we
all should know, the leftwing Fretilin was one of several East
Timorese factions engaged in, and on the verge of winning a civil
war in 1975, when Indonesian troops moved in.

In Southeast Asia at that time, for those who have forgotten,
people still remembered the abortive 1965 communist coup attempt
here; South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were under the former
Soviet sphere of influence; and East Timor's Fretilin was left
with the most arms by the departing Portuguese in their clumsy
"decolonization process." History will record that it was the
height of the Cold War, and forces of the extreme left were on
the march worldwide.

In sections of the western press nowadays, it is fashionable
to deride the Indonesian view that Ramos-Horta is a political
opportunist. It is often stated that Ramos-Horta has jettisoned
his left wing views, but would that have been the case if the
Soviet empire had not collapsed and there was an East Timor that
was separate from Indonesia? Did Ramos-Horta have a reason for
abandoning his political beliefs other than trying to gain
international support when hard-line socialism fell out of favor?

To ask some other questions: Did the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee -- a group of ivory tower academics in a faraway Nordic
country -- ever rely on truly objective reports about Indonesia
and East Timor? Have they ever set foot in Indonesia? Or did they
base their judgment on information from organizations such as
Tapol (political detainees) and Ramos-Horta's backers -- who
concentrate solely on the negative side of Indonesia's
administration of the province?

For those overawed by the Nobel Peace Prize judges: remember
they failed miserably to award this an honor to the late Mahatma
Gandhi -one of the greatest apostles of peace this century.

Finally, can Mr. Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian
Nobel Committee, say in front of a TV camera that he truly
believes that Fretilin activist Jose Ramos-Horta is of the same
caliber as Mahatma Gandhi -- or for that matter other Nobel Peace
Prize recipients, Mother Theresa, Woodrow Wilson, and Martin
Luther King, Jr?

FARID BASKORO

Jakarta