"I must say, with due respect and humility, that from 1975 onward, the United States was an accomplice" to Indonesia's "crime of genocide"
José Ramos-Horta took the United States to task for what he considers its hypocritical stand regarding the invasion of his native East Timor.
"I must say, with due respect and humility, that from 1975 onward, the United States was an accomplice" to Indonesia's "crime of genocide" by providing to the Indonesian government weapons and military training, Ramos-Horta said, even while asserting in the United Nations that East Timor had a right to self-determination.
Ramos-Horta made his assertions to the Salomon Center audience who came to hear his Ogden Memorial Lecture May 25.
It was such willingness to speak out that brought Ramos-Horta to the attention of the committee that selects recipients for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1996, Ramos-Horta and East Timorese Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo received the award for "their sustained and self-sacrificing contributions for a small but oppressed people" in East Timor, a country that was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. Since then, at least 200,000 East Timorese have been executed or starved to death due to the Indonesian occupation.
But Ramos-Horta's lecture offered more than just criticism. Saying that he was just "a man of great energy but modest intelligence," he offered praise for "the fraternity that has stood on the side of East Timor in its struggle," a fraternity that includes retired U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, "who for long years was the voice of a voiceless people," the Catholic Church, and the "women and men who have given their lives - the priests and nuns, the students and teachers, the brave resistance fighters. These are the true heroes," he said.
Ramos-Horta offered a description of the strategic vision East Timor could offer if given the chance to be an independent nation. The country could "serve as a crossroads" of three major cultures; it would have no standing army and would work for demilitarization of the region; and the Catholic Church would play a major healing role among the various ethnic groups and nationalities.
"No amount of force will ever be enough to destroy the will of a people to survive," he concluded.