andersen-ottaway lecture

2000 Andersen Lecture
Jose Ramos-Horta
Nobel Laureate, Foreign Minister, East Timor

Up From The Ashes: Building Democracy And A Free Press In East Timor

First, I would like to thank you so much for honoring me and inviting me to address you today, particularly following in the steps of two further, greater, more important individuals than me, my friends Kofi Annan and James Wolfensohn.

I thank you in particular, Marilyn, for about a year ago inviting me to come here. I am so glad to meet you in person, Mr. President Andersen, because whenever I was asked what I was going to do in Washington, your name Andersen, I associated only with hostage Anderson in Lebanon, and so I said, well, it was a journalist was held hostage in Lebanon. And then I thought you were dead, because usually you are, when you have a memorial lecture. I was taken aback - and I was glad that you were here alive. 

I’m so glad you walked in alive, healthy, and very excited. And before I continue, today I made another diplomatic, almost diplomatic blunder, because I invited a very, very well known gentleman to come, thinking at the time when I invited him that he was not known to anyone.

But because he has done terrific work as a kid, I thought, well, come with me, I’ll introduce you to the press. But when we checked more this morning, I heard that he’s going to be at the Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow.

This is my friend, Greg Smith. He’s only 11 years old, but he’s already in his second year in college, and he set up his own NGO when he was seven to promote peace and non-violence. He has been giving lectures from here to the National Press Club and President Clinton just wrote him a very nice letter.

He’s going to visit me in East Timor because I have asked him to help me with the kids in Timor, with getting pencils, exercise books, and so on. Thank you, Greg.

And I wish to introduce, also my colleague, Mr. Constancio Pinto, our de facto ambassador in Washington. He is not yet ambassador, but hopefully next year when we achieve formal independence, the newly elected foreign minister will agree with my choice that Constancio should be the first East Timor ambassador to Washington. 

I will start my comments with something I read yesterday on the way here in Le Monde, the daily French paper, which really shocked me. It was a report coming out of Jordan, quoting some Jordanians or young Palestinians talking about the conflict in Israel. I never read anything with so much venom, so much hatred, in my whole life.

The words used by victims, no matter who they are, against Jews - they were referring to Jews, they’re not referring only to Israel - for me was totally beyond understanding, because we too, are a torn country, East Timor. 200,000 people were slaughtered. I lost three brothers, a sister.

And yet, as I read that story in Le Monde, I remember that never once in 24 years of our struggle I heard from any of my colleagues any word of insult to the people of Indonesia, never once.

You would never hear a word disparaging about another nation, about another community, and that’s why when President Gus Dur (Indonesian nickname for President Abdurrahman Wahid) of Indonesia invited us to go to Indonesia two months after the destruction in 1999, we went without hesitation.

It took the French and Algerians more than 20 years before they exchanged visits. After more than 10 years of Iran-Iraq war, there has been no normalization in relations between Iran and Iraq and Kuwait and Iraq.

We went while the city was still burning, with more than 100,000 of our own people still being held hostage. One of my own sisters, the oldest one, was abducted in a warship in September with her children.

But we went to Indonesia because never once in our lifetime we confused Indonesian people with the Suharto Regime, with the behavior of the Indonesian Army. So we invited Gus Dur to come to East Timor, and he came in February. He was warmly welcomed by all of us. He dared to speak in the square, in a new democratic East Timor.

We did have a demonstration, a small group who demonstrated against Gus Dur’s visit. But they were demonstrating to demand the whereabouts of one of that group’s particular heroes, who had been captured a year or two years earlier. That’s all they wanted to know, and Xanana, my president, (Jose Alexandre Xanana Gusmao) organized a meeting between that group and Gus Dur’s and that was possible because we never, never instigated or resorted to religious, ethnic arguments in order to justify the independence of East Timor. ...When religion is manipulated, when ethnicity, rivalries among communities are exploited, it brings war, it brings violence. ...

One of the leaders of this modern 20th century that I admire the most...is Willy Brandt. Why Willy Brandt? Simple reason: One day I had heard in the news that he had been to Poland and kneeled down, apologized for World War II.

Well, a leader who has courage and humility, and to be humble, you must really have a lot of courage. A leader who acknowledges his country’s collective responsibility, and apologizes, that is a great leader. That’s why I always admire Willy Brandt.

But the topic is building a free media and democracy in East Timor.

Let me start by saying that when I launched, inaugurated, a journalists association, I said my policy is very basic: Let 1,000 newspapers blossom and bust. I don’t care, set up whatever newspapers you want, and television.

But I told the journalists, let me tell you one thing. One thing I love about the American system is that if you tell lies, I’ll sue you. I told the journalists, I’m saying it because your training has to do also with integrity, ethics, facts.

Because too often, if you look at the emerging media in Indonesia, in East Timor, in Eastern Central Europe, it does not do a great service to the true, independent democratic media. It is more like junk.

So one, I’m very pleased with the dynamic, the flourishing of the media in East Timor. The kids are terrific. The OTI, Office of Transition Initiatives, has been doing a terrific job in training them. I’m sending two people to Atlanta to CNN to learn CNN on line, paid for by Catholic Relief Services.

In the next few months, I hope I can be released from government duties after the transition to work with this younger generation to set up a national radio modeled on the BBC, a national television modeled on the BBC, but with one addition.

Besides the very independent nature of the BBC, I have proposed an addition to make it even more  independent, foolproof to any government in power in the day. And that is to use the Le Monde democratic process in electing the editor-in-chief.

There are many independent agencies in Europe like Agence France Presse, the Portuguese television and others, but the head of the news is appointed by the elected government. In the case of East Timor, we will have that BBC (model) but also that the journalists would elect the editor-in-chief.

That would ensure that the government of the day does not interfere with their own appointments, at least judging from the experience in some European countries where there is national news agency, national radio, national television. They’re very good, very independent, but the governments have a strong intervention. When they don’t like the way the media’s covering the government, well, they get the head of the media replaced. 

As we build the democratic institutions for independence, which probably will take place at end of next year, as we build the court system, train the judges to have a truly independent legal system, as we begin the discussions towards a draft Constitution and election of Constitutional Assembly, there is no discussion, no debate about it, that a truly independent or democratic East Timor in the future will be dependent on us having a truly independent and democratic media.

I would dare to say that if in East Asia, in Indonesia, we had a dynamic independent media, maybe the economic and the financial crisis in East Asia would not have taken place.

If there had been more debate by the public, if there had been more questioning on the excessive borrowing, of the excessive lending, probably we would not have had this catastrophic economic financial crisis that ruined the lives of the poorest in the region.

So democracy, free media, is not just an abstract theoretical concept imposed or imported from the West, but it has to do with our daily lives. It’s as simple as that. So there is no alternative.

A few months ago, a journalist asked me, was it worth the death of so many people, thousands of East Timorans, destruction of your continent to have an independent country?

Well, my answer was, one single life lost is one life too many. I personally do not accept, subscribe to any intellectual, political, ideological, religious argument to justify the killing of one single person. ...

But I would hope that five years from now when we look at our past, we will see a country that got rid of Malaria, TB, extreme poverty, that there is no corruption, there is transparency, tolerance by the Catholic majority toward the small Protestant and Muslim minorities, by a majority ethnic East Timorese toward the small Indonesian ethnic community.

Now we are left with an Indonesian ethnic community, and it is a tribute to the incredible tolerance of the people of East Timor that we haven’t had a Kosovo-style ethnic cleansing in East Timor. Yes, there have been abuses, the random abuses, but absolutely nothing that one can say comparable with any other situation.

Former militia leaders, some have returned, foot soldier militia have returned. Not one single one of them have been lynched. I see many of them myself. I have visited the Indonesian Mosque in Dili.

One of the most beautiful moments of my time in Dili since I returned was that one evening two or three months ago, I was riding back home from an engagement. It was about 10, 11 p.m. I saw hundreds of people gathering, and I told my Brazilian security entourage who always escorted me, ‘let’s go there,’ and we went.

What I did was I walked into a street fair, the first street fair in East Timor.

There was stalls, people doing different things, selling food, singing. There was even a snake charmer, and then I saw a special stall. I recognized some faces there, some Indonesians, Muslims who had their own stall.

I had visited them, had dinner with them in the Mosque a few months ago, when they were afraid to go out. But at 10 p.m., they were out, in their own stall, and I asked them how they went home. And they said, ‘Oh, we just walked,’ and they were not afraid.

If we can continue to promote, to preserve this extraordinary tolerance of the people of East Timor then I would say five years from now we did not betray the sacrifices of so many who died to have a country called East Timor.

Because having only a national anthem, a flag, there are many of them. There are many beautiful Constitutions, I don’t mention countries or regions. The Constitutions, the ideals that they proclaim, what they describe are all beautiful. But I wonder what the founding fathers of some of those great countries, long dead, if they were to return to earth and see what has been done after they’re gone, what they would think.

Unfortunately some didn’t depart, they stay on, and they themselves betray the principles, the ideals they fought for. They stay too long in power, and power corrupts. And they betray the many years of dreams, of sacrifice.

I know many others who share this conviction, this belief. ... the international community itself, the UN, our friends in Washington and around the world, in Portugal, that extraordinary brave country that stood for the people of East Timor for 25 years.

Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, our friends East Timor Action Network, ETAN, and many others in the church network, who gave so much of their lives and energy for the liberation of East Timor, they have earned the right to daily question, to daily scrutinize our policies so that East Timor doesn’t descend into the same path of so many independent nations.

The independence is all we have in a flag, a national anthem, annual parades by the military. If in five years from now when you visit us and you see a country that is not terribly prosperous but is free like Liechtenstein, like Luxembourg, free like Long Island - I mention Long Island because it is about roughly the size of East Timor - then I will say we did not betray those who died.

I thank you.