President José Ramos-Horta’s decades of diplomacy must now be deployed to bring peace and freedom to Myanmar
By Benedict Rogers in UCA News
Earlier this week, leaders of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the multilateral organization’s 47th Summit.
US President Donald Trump flew into the Malaysian capital for the first day of his three-nation Asian tour, before traveling on to Tokyo and Seoul.
And two historic, significant steps were taken.
First, Timor-Leste was finally welcomed as a full member of the regional bloc.
The region’s youngest nation became ASEAN’s newest member. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who had led his country’s struggle for freedom, described its accession to ASEAN as a “dream realized.”
He added that becoming ASEAN’s 11th member is “a powerful affirmation of our journey — one marked by resilience, determination, and hope.”
“Our accession is a testament to the spirit of our people, a young democracy born from our struggle. This is not the end of a journey. This is the beginning of an inspiring new chapter,” he stressed.
I wholeheartedly agree with him and share in his joy. Timor-Leste’s struggle for freedom was the first human rights cause with which I became personally deeply engaged.
While living in Hong Kong from 1997 until 2002, I came to know Timorese refugees in Macau, campaigned for their country’s liberation, traveled dozens of times to the smouldering half-island as it lay in ashes in the aftermath of the Indonesian military’s rampage of killing and destruction following the 1999 referendum, and attended the birth of the new nation in 2002.
I lived in Dili for three months during the transition to independence, working with the inspirational Timorese nun Sister Maria Lourdes Martins da Cruz — or “Mana Lou” as she is affectionately known — and her amazing Institute of Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
I vividly remember the first person I met in Timor-Leste when I arrived in early 2000. The country was in ashes. Within half an hour of arriving in Dili, I met a 15-year-old street boy. “My mother — dead,” he told me in broken English, drawing his index finger down his stomach, demonstrating the act of pulling out his intestines.
“My mother with baby — both dead.” His eyes filled with tears. “My father dead too,” he added, indicating a spear through his stomach. “And my big brother too,” he continued — illustrating limbs hacked off with machetes.
I visited numerous sites where massacres had been perpetrated just a few months before. I went to Liquica, where nine months earlier an infamous slaughter had occurred at the church. I met the parish priest, Father Rafael dos Santos, who miraculously survived that massacre.
I came to know the country’s leaders — its former guerrilla fighter, political prisoner and first president, Xanana Gusmao, its former exiled activist and first foreign minister, Dr José Ramos-Horta, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Dili and others.
So 25 years on from when I first visited Timor-Leste, and 23 years after its independence, it was beautiful to see Prime Minister Gusmao and President Ramos-Horta being received, on behalf of their country, into ASEAN.
The question is: what will they do with their membership?
As someone who loves Timor-Leste, I hope it will benefit greatly from the trade and investment opportunities.
I hope ASEAN membership will help Timor-Leste develop from one of the world’s poorest countries into a more prosperous nation.
But I also hope Timor-Leste will bring to the regional bloc the lessons learned from its own struggle.
I hope it will bring the moral clarity about the fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human rights, values which its people have fought for and won, with enormous sacrifice.
I hope its history will inspire democrats and civil society throughout the region to stand up against dictatorship and advance human dignity. Timor-Leste can provide leadership in these ways.
The second major development at the 47th ASEAN Summit was the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia, following the border conflict that erupted earlier this year.
President Trump likes to present himself as the broker of the deal and the agreement as a definitive peace deal, but voices in the region are more skeptical.
While both sides agreed to de-escalate, withdrawing heavy weapons from the disputed region, and establishing an interim observer team to monitor developments, it is no more than a “pathway to peace,” according to the Thai foreign minister.
But for the tensions between Thailand and Cambodia to be finally resolved, there is a need for investigation and accountability for war crimes, as Fortify Rights and others have called for.
Yet despite these two positive steps — the accession of Timor-Leste and at least a cessation of hostilities on the Thai-Cambodian border — there is one big elephant in the room that the 47th ASEAN Summit failed to properly address: Myanmar.
It begs the question that has dogged ASEAN for decades: How do you solve a problem like Myanmar?
The 11-member bloc is split.
Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore — the region’s relatively more open, democratic and rule-of-law-based countries — take a relatively tougher, more proactive line on the situation in Myanmar.
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei — the more authoritarian states — lean towards supporting Myanmar’s junta.
Thailand, Myanmar’s neighbor, is in between.
And Myanmar itself is an ASEAN member state, though the country’s democratically elected leaders don’t have a seat at the ASEAN table.
The arrival of Timor-Leste — ASEAN’s newest member, perhaps its most vibrant democracy, which has endured atrocity crimes along its own pathway to freedom not dissimilar to the mass atrocities suffered by Myanmar’s population — is potentially a breath of fresh air.
That is why Timor-Leste’s President José Ramos-Horta, in particular, must exert his leadership. His decades of diplomacy must now be deployed on behalf of Myanmar’s people. He must use this opportunity to bring people together to bring peace and freedom to Myanmar.
But it cannot be peace at any price. As Fortify Rights, along with 35 other civil society groups from Timor-Leste, across the region and around the world have called, Timor-Leste — as one of the few state parties in Asia to the International Criminal Court (ICC) — must use its position to refer the entire situation in Myanmar to the ICC Prosecutor’s office under Article 14 of the Rome Statute, to bring the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to justice.
The ICC, at present, is only investigating a narrow body of crimes committed in 2017 against only one of Myanmar’s many ethnic groups — the Rohingya — and while that investigation is historic and important, it is not enough given the scale and severity of the atrocities happening nationwide.
As Myanmar’s military regime plans to hold sham elections, starting on Dec. 28, the world must be quick to declare that these are sham polls. None of the conditions for a free, fair and legitimate election are in place.
Under Malaysia’s chairmanship, ASEAN adopted this position. The incoming chairmanship of the Philippines must maintain this position. And ASEAN’s newest member — Timor-Leste, where my human rights passion was born — has a vital role to play in holding ASEAN’s feet to the fire.
Following this summit in Kuala Lumpur, policy-makers in Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and Dili must coordinate to support the forces of democracy, freedom and human rights in Myanmar, and a vision of peace, stability and liberty across the region.
This article was originally published in UCA News.