I awaken to the news that President José Ramos-Horta of East Timor was shot by rebel soldiers outside his home in Dili, the country’s capital.  The perpetrators included Alfredo Reinado, a former major in the military police.

Ramos-Horta, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, was airlifted to a hospital in Australia, where he is in critical condition.

This wanton violence brought my thoughts back to East Timor in a direct and palpable way.

From 1995 to 2000, I served on the National Council of Church’s Task Force for East Timor and supported the work of my friend Rev. John Chamberlin.  Chamberlin had founded East Timor Religious Outreach.  For many years he has worked tirelessly on behalf of east Timor – first for its independence from Indonesia, and then for its development as the planet’s newest nation.  These initiatives were largely catalyzed in response to a massacre that took place in Dili on November 12, 1991, in which as many as 400 people were killed by Indonesian forces at the Sant Cruz Cemetery, where East Timorese were protesting an earlier killing of an activist in the independence movement.

As part of this work, we organized a national strategy retreat of religious leadership and staged many demonstrations at the Indonesian consulate in San Francisco, California.  John has made countless trips to East Timor.  

I recall with vividness a meal that Ramos-Horta, Chamberlin and I shared early in 1996 in Berkeley.  This was before the publicity that came with the peace prize.  Ramos-Horta was in exile, as he had been for years, traveling the world to plead his homeland’s cause.  During that lunch, he ruminated on the impasse that the struggle seemed to be at.  As part of the conversation, we reflected on the history of many other social movements that almost without exception arrived at this place of “stuckness.”  We discussed the movement map that Bill Moyer had developed to highlight the life-cycle of a movement (laid out in his book, Doing Democracy), with the stage of paralysis and even failure at the very center of that life-cycle.  

As Ramos-Horta shared his own reflections on his freedom movement, we could see the light in his eye: the unflagging commitment to see the struggle to the end. 

A few months later, the Nobel Prize (shared with Bishop Belo of East Timor) was awarded, worldwide attention was riveted on East Timor, and the movement on the ground there – coupled with unexpected shifts in Indonesia — moved to the next stage. In 1999, following a United Nations-sponsored referendum, Indonesia relinquished control of the territory and East Timor became the first new sovereign state of the twenty-first century on May 20, 2002.

None of this was easy.  After worldwide pressure mounted, the UN referendum was held on August 30, 1999 to choose between Special Autonomy within Indonesia or independence. As Wikipedia summarizes: “78.5% of voters chose independence, but violent clashes, instigated primarily by elements within the Indonesian military and aided by Timorese pro-Indonesia militias led by Eurico Guterres, broke out soon afterwards. A peacekeeping force (INTERFET, led by Australia) intervened to restore order.”

Ken Preston-Pile, who was in the process of joining the Pace e Bene staff at that time, was in East Timor during the referendum and returned with stories of both the brutal violence perpetrated on the East Timorese and the staunch nonviolent stance he saw in action during his time there.

In the years since then, an orderly process to full independence unfolded, though there have been many efforts to undermine the direction of this new country.  With this latest horror, we see again the cost of working for structural change that supports the well-being of all.

We now wait in prayerful vigil with the people of East Timor for the recovery of José Ramos-Horta – and for the continuation of this fledgling nation’s new direction toward economic justice and genuine peace.