Jose Ramos Horta Biography

José Ramos Horta

(Dili, 1940) Timorese politician and patriot.His efforts to reach a peaceful solution for the secessionism of East Timor, a province under Indonesian occupation, earned him the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the Reverend Carlos Felipe Belo, Bishop of Dili.

Ramos Horta grew up in a humble family.His mother was from Mauberense (native of Timor), while his father was Portuguese, exiled to the Portuguese colony in the Indian Ocean due to the Salazar dictatorship in the Iberian country.He was educated at the Soibada Catholic School, where he received an intellectual and spiritual formation that made him orient himself towards the priesthood.Later, he went on to study secondary school at the Liceu Dr.Machado de Dili, where he made his first contacts with the Maubean resistance movement.

Between 1968 and 1969 he already participated actively in the incipient nationalism of Timor, carrying out several protests against the Portuguese domination that earned him his first exile, between 1970 and 1971, in Mozambique.There he met the one who became his wife, Anna Pessoa, a Mauberense who worked as a lawyer in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, and with whom he had a son, born in 1977.

Back in Timor Oriental, began working as a journalist for a local media outlet, under the acquiescence of Xanana Gusmao, the main leader of FRETILIN (acronym for the Frente Revolucionária de Timor Leste Independente ).The nationalist movement was gaining presence in the eastern part of Timor until de facto control of most of the territory, which led to the proclamation of independence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, on November 28, 1975.Ramos Horta was appointed minister Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the short-lived Mauba government.

In December 1975, days before the Indonesian invasion of Timor took place, Ramos Horta left the island for New York, where he was commissioned by the government of Timor to demand from the UN Security Council a quick intervention in the face of the annexationist appeals of Indonesia.The result of his appeal was null, since, despite various warnings from the international community, the Indonesian army invaded East Timor on December 7, 1975, exceeding in particular the FRETILIN headquarters, established in the native town.from Ramos Horta, Soibada; During the first attacks, four of his eleven siblings died.

From 1976 to 1992, Ramos Horta lived in the United States, where, after separating from his wife, he was ordained a priest on July 26, 1980.Between 1987 and 1988 he had to work as an employee of the Mozambican embassy in the United States, since his economic situation was really difficult.Thanks to this, he was able to take classes in International Law at the Academy in The Hague (Holland) and Human Rights Law at the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg (France).Previously, in 1983, he had studied for a doctorate at the Faculty of International Political Sciences of Columbia University (New York), and obtained the degree of Doctor of Peace Studies from the University of Antioquia (Ohio), in 1984.

During his stay in North America he did not stop denouncing before various organizations the atrocities of the Indonesian domination of East Timor, estimated at more than two hundred thousand deaths only in the first five years of the war.Starting in 1976, Ramos Horta was the representative of the newborn CNMR (Concilio Nacional de Resistencia Maubere) in all international forums.His experience as a diplomat was captured in the book Funu: the unfinished saga of East Timor (1987).

In 1992, with the imprisonment of Xanana Gusmao, Ramos Horta was left as the only voice denouncing the Indonesian violence in East Timor.Thus, in that year, he presented a peace plan for East Timor before the European Parliament, in which the three basic points of the same were explicitly indicated: after accepting the right of the Mauberenses to freely choose their government, the first step remained established in the resolution of the armed conflict between the Indonesian army and the CNRM resistance; in secondly, the amnesty for all political and military prisoners, the withdrawal of the invading troops from East Timor and their replacement by Blue Helmets from the UN; thirdly, the establishment of a referendum supervised by international observers in which Mauberenses could choose between three options: independence, integration in Indonesia or becoming a state associated with Portugal.

The support of the Community European to Ramos Horta's plan was decisive for the UN to pressure the President of Indonesia, Suharto, to cooperate with him.The first meeting between Indonesian and Maubean politicians took place in Austria, in October 1994, when the Indonesian delegation, led by its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alí ​​Alatas, began a dialogue with Ramos Horta, leader of the CNRM.Despite this, a basic agreement was not reached until 1996, the same year that Ramos Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the humanitarian work that Bishop Carlos Belo carries out in the diocese of Dili.