[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 22 (Wednesday, February 26, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E327-E328]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ADDRESS BY FRANCIS SEJERSTED

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 26, 1997

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, last November, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and 
Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their 
efforts in bringing peace to East Timor. I had the opportunity to 
attend the ceremony in Oslo with my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio, 
Tony Hall, who nominated Bishop Belo for the prize in 1994 and 1995. I 
then had the opportunity to visit Bishop Belo in East Timor in January.
  As part of our bipartisan effort to recognize the Nobel Prize winners 
today, I am submitting for the Record the speech made by the chairman 
of the Nobel Committee when he presented the award.

     Address by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel 
 Committee, on the Occasion of the Award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 
                                  1996

       Your Majesties, Presidents, Excellencies, ladies and 
     gentlemen: On behalf of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, may I 
     extend to everyone a warm welcome to this year's Nobel Peace 
     Prize ceremony. It is one hundred years to the day since 
     Alfred Nobel died. A year earlier, he had drawn up his will, 
     in which he determined that his considerable wealth should 
     provide for annual awards of five prizes, three for science, 
     one for literature, and one for peace, to those whose work, 
     as he wrote, ``shall have conferred the greatest benefit on 
     mankind''. It was also laid down in the will that the Peace 
     Prize should be awarded in Norway by a committee appointed by 
     the Norwegian storting. Our thoughts today go also to 
     Stockholm, where the other awards are being made, and where 
     the centenary is being marked of the death of Alfred Nobel.
       Nobel was, of course, an unusually successful businessman. 
     But that was not where his heart lay. His happiest times were 
     spent in the laboratory. Inventions, it has been said, became 
     for him a way of life. He was also very widely read. He was 
     in other words greatly interested, indeed a believer, in 
     science and literature. What was remarkable was his moral 
     approach to those activities, which he saw as opportunities 
     for promoting a better world. This perspective emerges most 
     clearly in his decision concerning a peace prize. It can be 
     argued that the invention of dynamite, and concern at the 
     more powerful weapons which it made possible, contributed to 
     his increasing commitment to peace. But there were other 
     impulses, too, impulses which appealed to his deeply rooted 
     moral instincts, first and foremost his contact with the 
     future Peace Prize Laureate Bertha von Suttner and with the 
     contemporary peace movement.
       Nobel left an important inheritance, consisting of a vision 
     of a better world, and an award institution which was to 
     contribute to the realization of that vision. We who have 
     been entrusted with managing that inheritance do so in 
     humility and with deep respect for the man Alfred Nobel, 
     whose memory we honour today.
       It is with great pleasure, and in the conviction that with 
     this year's choice we have managed Nobel's inheritance in the 
     best possible way, that we welcome our Peace Prize Laureates 
     today. Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta have 
     been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1996 for their long-
     lasting efforts to achieve a just and peaceful solution to 
     the twenty-year-old conflict in East Timor. To reach this 
     peaceful winterland Norway, you have come about as far from 
     your home country as it is possible to travel on this earth. 
     Yet the distance between us is much shorter in miles than in 
     opportunities for peace, justice and reconciliation. We are 
     grateful and proud that, in the middle of your important and 
     self-sacrificing work, you have found time for the journey 
     here, thereby giving us this opportunity to honour you.
       The conflict in East Timor has been called ``the forgotten 
     conflict''. It has not, however, been completely forgotten, 
     having figured on the international agenda, with 
     varying degrees of prominence, throughout those twenty 
     years. But it has so to speak never caught on. There have 
     been so many other interests and regards to attend to, and 
     East Timor is so small. Rarely has the cynicism of world 
     politics been more clearly demonstrated. The numerous 
     considerations of ``Realpolitik'' have enabled an 
     exceptionally brutal form of neocolonialism to take place. 
     Of a population of between six and seven hundred thousand, 
     nearly two hundred thousand have died as the direct or 
     indirect result of the Indonesian occupation. And the 
     violations are still taking place today. Many are the 
     countries which have given higher priority to their 
     ``Realpolitical'' cooperation with Indonesia than to 
     regard for East Timor. This is the apparently hopeless 
     situation in which our two Laureates have so untiringly 
     striven for a just and peaceful arrangement for their 
     people.
       The autumn of 1975 was fateful for East Timor. First the 
     old colonial masters, the Portuguese, withdrew. Then an 
     internal struggle broke out between the Timorese Democratic 
     Union on the one hand and the Fretilin liberation movement on 
     the other. And the autumn ended with the Indonesian invasion. 
     In the twenty-one years that have passed since, this conquest 
     of a country and a people has never been internationally 
     recognised. Ramos-Horta was a Fretilin leader, one of the 
     moderates whose ideal was social democracy. During the so-
     called civil war, he was out of the country, and on his 
     return in September he tried to reconcile the parties. Since 
     the invasion he has lived abroad, unceasingly and with great 
     personal sacrifice collecting and communicating information 
     on the repression, torture and killing in his home country, 
     and acting as East Timor's principal international spokesman. 
     At the same time he has successfully kept up his efforts to 
     unite the various East Timorese groups in a single national 
     front, while constantly seeking opportunities for a peaceful 
     solution to the conflict with Indonesia, based on respect for 
     the integrity of the East Timorese people. ``We used to joke 
     that he was more an informal member of the Democratic Union 
     than a Fretilin leader,'' says Union leader Joao Carrascalao. 
     The remark illustrates the part played by Ramos-Horta as a 
     mediator and conciliator. No serious negotiations aimed at 
     resolving the conflict are conceivable today without the 
     participation of Ramos-Horta or one of his aides, as Bishop 
     Belo has also emphasized.
       As a relatively unknown priest, Bishop Belo was appointed 
     Apostolic Administrator for the Roman Catholic church in East 
     Timor in 1983, since when he has served on his home ground. 
     Again and again, in the midst of everyday terror and 
     suffering, he has intervened, trying to reconcile and mediate 
     and lessen confrontation, and in doing so he has saved many 
     lives. Intervening in a violent conflict entails a risk of 
     being crushed between the antagonists. ``Pray for me, 
     please,'' he said in one such situation, ``because now I have 
     to defend myself on both sides''. But Bishop Belo has become

[[Page E328]]

     much more than a mediator: this man of peace has also become 
     a rallying point for his sorely tried people, a 
     representative of their hope for a better future. The love 
     his people feel for this mediator springs from certain 
     fundamental principles he has adhered to. Show the people 
     respect. Give them freedom to develop their humanity to the 
     full. Then ask them whether they want to be Indonesians, 
     Portuguese, or independent. Bishop Belo shares with his 
     people the insight of the oppressed, an insight deeper than 
     that of generals or oppressors. Why all this brutality? It 
     does not even serve its purpose. You do not gain respect if 
     you do not show respect.
       This year has seen the commemoration, forty years on, of 
     the Soviet Union's brutal crushing of the popular rising in 
     Hungary in 1956. The West did not intervene. Since Hungary 
     lay within the Soviet sphere of interest, it was necessary 
     ``Realpolitik'' to accept the invasion. We would do well to 
     recall that at that time, a marking of the event forty years 
     later in a free Hungary lay beyond the bounds of what most 
     people thought possible. It has been said that Indonesia's 
     annexation of East Timor is a historic fact. But history has 
     never established anything as a fact forever. History always 
     moves on. If we have learned anything in the past decade, it 
     must be that the most repressive regimes are the most 
     fragile. There are forces in history more powerful than the 
     strongest military force. Violence and terror do not lead to 
     peace. Not until one builds up the courage to break out of 
     the vicious circle of violence do opportunities arise for an 
     enduring peace.
       The right to live, the right to full development as human 
     beings, the right to respect, are at the heart of the concept 
     of human rights. Since the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 
     1960 to Albert Luthuli, work for human rights has been one of 
     the principal criteria for the award. We have constantly 
     received confirmation that this was the right path to take, 
     although the choice of this criterion has also been 
     criticized because it allegedly has nothing to do with peace. 
     But it is precisely in forging a close link between the human 
     rights criterion and peace that we believe we are realizing 
     that criterion's most universal and most fundamental aspects. 
     Peace, stability and harmony must be based on mutual respect. 
     That, so simple and so universal, is the message. Once it has 
     been heard, the next step is to institutionalise the respect, 
     in various ways according to cultural traditions. Violence, 
     on the other hand, systematic violence on the part of those 
     in power, can never be justified within the framework of a 
     universal concept of human rights. That is a fact to which 
     the victims of violence could testify. Never forget to listen 
     to the voice of the victims, the voice of the nearly two 
     hundred thousand whose lives were lost in massacres or from 
     the hunger and want which resulted from the Indonesian 
     invasion of East Timor.
       This year's two Peace Prize Laureates, Carlos Filipe 
     Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta, have labored tirelessly, 
     and with great personal sacrifice, for their oppressed 
     people. Under extremely difficult conditions, they have 
     preserved their humanity and faith in the future. It is in 
     admiration of their work and in the hope for a better future 
     for East Timor that the Norwegian Nobel Committee today 
     honors them with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1996.

                          ____________________