11-05-98

By Mark Floyd, 541-737-0788
SOURCE: Laurie Girtman, 541-737-4582

CORVALLIS - Jose Ramos-Horta, a human rights activist and co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, will deliver the 17th annual Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace at Oregon State University on Thursday, Nov. 12.

His free public lecture, "The Code of Conduct in International Arms Transfers," will begin at 8 p.m. in OSU's LaSells Stewart Center, 26th Street and Western Boulevard in Corvallis.

For the past 23 years, Ramos-Horta has been a leading advocate for the rights of self-determination for the people of his homeland, East Timor. He first addressed the United Nations Security Council in 1975, urging them to intercede against the military actions of the Indonesian military which eventually resulted in Indonesia's annexation of East Timor and the deaths of 200,000 East Timorese people from 1976-81.

His long battle for East Timor independence led to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, which Ramos-Horta shared with his countryman, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.

The Nobel committee honored them for their "sustained efforts to hinder the oppression of a small people...this will spur efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict of East Timor based on the people's right to self-determination."

Born in Dili, East Timor, in 1949 on the day after Christmas, Ramos-Horta is the son of a Timorese mother and a Portuguese father, who had been exiled to East Timor by the Salazar dictatorship. During the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, four of Ramos-Horta's 11 brothers and sisters were killed.

He became actively involved in political awareness campaigns for self-determination, and for his efforts he was exiled for two years to Mozambique. Exile was something of a family tradition, Ramos-Horta recounts. His grandfather, too, was exiled, from Portugal to Azores, to Cape Verde, to Guinea Bissau, and finally, to East Timor.

He has represented East Timor interests in numerous peace plan discussions and, in October of 1994, he met with Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas - the first such public meeting between high-ranking representatives of the two sides since the invasion.

The annual Pauling lecture is sponsored by the OSU College of Liberal Arts, and co-sponsored by the Pauling Lectureship Fund.

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