EAST TIMOR: Indonesia Praises One Nobel Laureate but Scorns Another

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 13 1996 (IPS) - For Indonesia’s military regime, East Timorese Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo is a worthy recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, while his co-winner Jose Ramos Horta is a terrorist.

Jakarta’s effort to divide the two men, who jointly received the Nobel Prize in Oslo on Tuesday, continued this week as Indonesia’s special ambassador-at-large on East Timor praised Belo, but questioned the Nobel committee’s judgment in also naming Ramos Horta.

“I share Bishop Belo’s dreams of peace and continued stability in our province,” said envoy Francisco Lopes da Cruz, a Timorese who supports Indonesia’s 1976 annexation of East Timor. “There are no questions, and no problems, from the (Indonesian) government about Bishop Belo.”

Ramos Horta, a founding member of the National Liberation Front of East Timor (FRETILIN), remains beyond the pale for Jakarta, however.

“He has done everything he could to sabotage and discredit the peace process,” Lopes da Cruz said of the Nobel laureate.

“As a Timorese, I think that maybe the committee of the Nobel Peace Prize has humiliated the Catholic Church…by putting Ramos Horta on the same level” as Belo, Lopes da Cruz argued.

But pro-independence Timorese and their supporters believe that, behind a facade of support for Bishop Belo, the Jakarta government is pressuring the Roman Catholic priest to prevent him from speaking out against the Indonesian occupation of the small island state.

In recent days, Jakarta has mixed measured praise for Belo, who advocates nonviolent solutions to Timor’s ongoing military occupation, with threats that the bishop could lose his current Indonesian passport if he speaks out against Indonesia.

Ramos Horta told IPS while visiting the United Nations last month that a demonstration by some 3,000 Indonesians against Belo when the priest visited Jakarta last month could presage future harassment of the main religious leader of East Timor, where more than 90 percent of the population is Catholic.

The main threat — voiced by, among others, Indonesian President Soeharto — is that Belo could lose his Indonesian passport, and thus his ability to travel easily from East Timor and outside. Soeharto first made the threat last month after an interview in Germany’s ‘Der Spiegel’ quoted Belo as saying that Jakarta has treated Timorese as “scabby dogs.” Belo has since denied the quote.

“When Belo stopped in Lisbon (last week), the Indonesians threatened to take away his Indonesian passport,” charged John Miller, spokesman for the U.S.-based East Timor Action Network, a pro-Timorese independence group. Since then, Miller said, Belo has tempered his words about Indonesia’s occupation.

Lopes da Cruz denied that Jakarta would seek to deny Belo his citizenship in what Indonesia regards as its 27th province. “Bishop Belo has the liberty to choose a Vatican passport, but he chooses an Indonesian passport,” the Indonesian envoy said. “He has an Indonesian identity…There is no pressure (against him) from the Indonesian government.”

Since the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, Jakarta is finding it worthwhile to defend Belo’s nonviolent posture on East Timor, at last rhetorically, while condemning Ramos Horta’s unequivocal demands for a referendum on Timorese self- determination.

“Indonesia found out that they don’t get anything from attacking Belo directly,” Miller said.

The bishop’s plea, however, remains a strong one on behalf of ending the violence and human rights violations in East Timor, where some 200,000 Timorese out of total population of 700,000 were killed in the years immediately following Indonesia’s 1975 invasion.

“I feel ever more strongly that it is high time that the guns are silenced in East Timor once and forever,” Belo said in accepting his award in Oslo. “It is high time that there be an authentic dialogue.”

Those words are little different from those of Ramos Horta, who claims Belo as his spiritual leader. “As a Catholic, I listen to him…even if I disagree with him,” Ramos Horta told IPS. He encouraged U.S. President Bill Clinton to meet Belo, whom the pro- independence leader lauds as a symbol of the Timorese people.

The main difference between the two Nobel laureates, Ramos Horta said, is that Belo “does not like young people to demonstrate.”

“(Belo) doesn’t actually believe in protest, in part to protect his flock because he knows what kind of repression can happen,” Miller said. But both men, he contended, believe in achieving self-determination for East Timor, although he noted that Belo did not mention the topic in his Nobel speech.

Lopes da Cruz countered that the bishop has placed himself above politics, and, in a pastoral letter this year, argued that a referendum may not help East Timor’s crisis since it could lead to civil war.

Jakarta does not regard a referendum as necessary, claiming that a group of pro-Indonesian Timorese recognised its annexation as legal in 1976. “For us in East Timor, the problem is already over,” Lopes da Cruz said. “East Timor, de facto and de jure, is a part of Indonesia.”