Nobel Spotlight on a Remote Conflict

In honoring Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and political activist Jose Ramos-Horta with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee expressed its hope that the award to the two natives of East Timor would spur efforts to resolve the conflict plaguing that disputed area. The committee’s message of support for a diplomatic solution “based on the people’s right to self-determination” was addressed primarily to--and quickly rejected by--Indonesia.

Indonesia annexed East Timor in 1976 after sending in armed forces to suppress an independence movement that sprang up when Portugal ended its 400 years of colonial rule there. In the fighting and famine that followed, more than 200,000 Timorese may have died.

The conflict over East Timor has taken on religious as well as nationalistic overtones. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, while most of the 720,000 East Timorese are Roman Catholics who object to the settlement of Indonesian Muslims and the favoritism they believe has been shown them.

Belo is an advocate of self-determination for East Timor, and Ramos-Horta, from his exile in Australia, has been a tireless campaigner for independence.

Two decades ago the world paid little attention to what happened on remote East Timor, between Java and Australia, and it has given even less notice to much of what has happened since. With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has usefully jogged the international memory about a conflict that has been too long ignored.