Peacemaking: The power of nonviolence
Jose Ramos-Horta

Nobel Peace Prize-winner
Human Rights Diplomat

Jose Ramos-Horta was born on December 26, 1949, in Dili - East Timor. He was educated in a Catholic mission in the retired village of Soibada. Of his eleven brothers and sisters, four were killed by the Indonesian military.

He was actively involved in the development of political awareness in East Timor which caused him to be exiled for two years in 1970-1971 in Mozambique.

A moderating influence in the emerging Timorese nationalism, he was mandated in 1974-75 by the pro-independence parties to represent East Timor abroad. He left the island three days before the Indonesian troops invaded.

In December 1975, he arrived in New York to address the UN Security Council and urge them to take action in the face of the Indonesian military onslaught which resulted in over 200,000 East Timorese deaths between 1976 and 1981. Jose Ramos-Horta was the Permanent Representative of the FRETILIN to the UN for the ensuing ten years, and tells of his experience as a diplomat to Funu: the Sage of East Timor (Red Sea Press, New York, 1987).

Jose Ramos-Horta has spent the last 23 years denouncing the illegal invasion and annexation of his homeland by Indonesia, always defending the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination. He had presented the case of East Timor and pleaded for the respect of Human Rights, lending his voice to the voiceless, before the UN Security Council, the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Council on Foreign Relations, the European Parliament.