José Ramos-Horta
East Timor, 1996
"Democracy and Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific Region"
November 5, 1998

José Ramos-Horta: "Thank you. First, I would like to thank so much the organizers of this conference for your kindness in inviting me and giving a platform to the often voiceless people of East Timor. And I bring to you the warmest greetings of my good friend and co-Laureate of the 1996 Peace Prize, Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo.

This morning, as I was sitting next to my good friend, Oscar Arias, in the bus coming here, I asked him, "Do you have a written speech?" He said he does. And that’s when I got nervous because if Oscar Arias, such a brilliant, wonderful statesman, brings a written speech, and I don’t have a written speech...he literally spoiled my morning. And so, I have to apologize to you if my speech is going to be a rambling one.

And let me start by sharing with you a story. A few years ago, I was in Sweden, and paid a courtesy call to the Cuban Ambassador in Stockholm. A colleague of mine accompanied me to the meeting. After the meeting, my colleague told me, "If your intention was to tell the Cuban Ambassador how the situation in East Timor was very confused, you did a very good job, because the man was totally confused. You mixed three languages throughout the discussion. Why the hell didn’t you just speak in Portuguese?" So, please, my apologies if my English is not clear enough, eloquent enough to convey to you what the people of East Timor feel, and what I feel.

You might recall-to situate the question of East Timor and the region in its historical and geopolitical context-you might recall a picture that made headlines in 1975. It was a picture of an American helicopter trying to land on the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon to rescue American diplomats, CIA officials, South Vietnamese collaborators. Soon after the collapse of U.S. presence in South Vietnam followed Cambodia, Laos. Better than a thousand words, that picture illustrated the humiliating retreat from one of the two superpowers from a peasant war in Asia. In another continent the same year, the Portuguese empire had collapsed, Cuban/Soviet forces entered the battleground for influence in Angola. Mozambique became independent under a Marxist movement. The battle between East and West for influence in Southern Africa rages on. In the horn of Africa, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia had been overthrown, again shifting the balance of power to the Soviet side. The Soviet Union was already in control, so to speak, in Somalia: with the collapse of Haile Selassie, a Marxist regime took over. It seemed as if the "domino theory" first articulated by Lyndon Johnson, which served as a strategic rationale for U.S. intervention in China, was being confirmed.

It was against this background that then-President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger visited Indonesia December 6, 1975. Within twelve hours of their departure, East Timor was invaded by Indonesia. East Timor, a country of 700,000 then, 95 % subsistence farmers, peasants, squeezed in an area of only 19,000 square kilometers, were to experience in the following years one of the worst massacres-amounting to genocide-since the end of World War II. The tens of thousands of people who died in East Timor in the following days, weeks and months and years were, in fact, just a footnote to the Cold War, a casualty of realpolitik and pragmatism of states. We, the East Timorese, join the Tibetans, the Kurdish, the Armenians in the past, the Palestinians, the Gypsies, the Jews for centuries, as expendable peoples, as casualties of the grand scheme of the larger powers. Some of us have managed to survive and get out of oblivion. At least, cease to be ignored-the Palestinians. But if we were to try to understand why all of this happened, what happened to the Jews for centuries, to the Tibetans for the past fifty years, to the Kurdish in endless wars, to the East Timorese, I would say, we are all sacrificed in the order of realpolitik and pragmatism of states.

One issue that always captured my attention-even though I come from a very remote island far away from the Middle Eastern region-I was always fascinated by one people, the Jews. As young as a teenager in the Sixties, I would relentlessly look for books on the Jewish history. And one thing I could not comprehend: the persecution, the discrimination, the killing of the Jews. And then a few years ago, I found out that apart from my Asian and African heritage, I have some Jewish heritage as well, going back to the Inquisition. Maybe that is why my curiosity. But why the Jews were almost literally thoroughly destroyed in the Thirties? What wrong have they done? A powerless group of people. No power behind them. It was prejudice, ignorance for centuries that led to the hatred towards the Jews. But if those who were so hateful of the Jews were to read and study their extraordinary culture-the wealth, the richness of their history and their culture, their music-maybe that would not have happened, those years, centuries of persecution and discrimination.

What I want to drive at is that my contention, my belief, is that it is ignorance of each other that feeds into prejudice. Prejudice leads to suspicion and then conflict. I do not wish to oversimplify. There are other reasons for wars, such as fighting to control natural resources, territory. But a lot of the wars in the past and today are caused by prejudices because of ignorance, and then mistrust and fear of the other side. We, the East Timorese, join all these peoples-the Jews, the Palestinians, the Tibetans, the Burmese, the Armenians in the past-in this long list of endless conflict, people sacrificed in all the pragmatism and realpolitik.

Twenty-three years ago, no one thought the East Timorese could survive the onslaught. Every major country in the world provided weapons to Indonesia. Countries that preach democracy and human rights were the ones that provided the most weapons. Not only to Indonesia, but to many dictators around the world. All kinds of weapons were unleashed on the people of East Timor. Twenty-three years later, we are there kicking, surviving, and it is the Indonesian empire that is collapsing around us. The Suharto dictatorship is gone. There is a dynamic, lively democracy movement taking shape in Indonesia. And Indonesian people are beginning to ask, "What have we done to this small nation of East Timor?" Who is going to explain to the Indonesian people the loss of their own people-thousands of Indonesian soldiers, young people, lost their lives in the fields of East Timor? Who is going to explain to the Indonesian people the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in weapons purchases instead of channeling them to education, health care, clean water, housing for their people?"

The West has something to answer as well. With the end of the Cold War, we thought there would be less conflicts, but as Europe could no longer find much market in Europe itself for their weapons, since the end of the Cold War, they actively promote weapon sales to the poorest countries of the south. We became the dumping ground, the market for the excess weapons produced by the democracies of the north. I will not elaborate much on this topic because our good friend, Oscar, will address this issue. But the collapse of the East Asian myth-of the East Asian tiger economies-Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea-as painful as they are, these economic collapses, for the millions of people in the region, it opened extraordinary opportunities for democracy and the rule of law to finally triumph and prevail in the region. And they have destroyed the so-called "Asian values" that have been advanced for many years by Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Li Peng of China, and Suharto of Indonesia. Asian values that supposedly are unique and stand against universal Declaration of Human Rights, which are supposed to be, according to them, a western concept. The millions of people pouring into the streets of Rangoon, Bangkok, Manila, Indonesia, South Korea, are telling their leaders that human rights, democracy, rule of law are also our aspirations, are also our rights. That is the extraordinary opportunity offered by this economic and financial collapse in the region. And, as I speak here today, I must say thanks, President Clinton, for the U.S. leadership in this current crisis in the region. Sometimes I think back on the criticism that people addressed at the U.S., but the reality is when the need comes, it has been the U.S., and particularly under this administration, that has offered the necessary leadership for economic recovery in East Asia, for peace in the Middle East, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland. And again it was Clinton, after many, many years of Africa being ignored, being off the agenda, being off the radar screen of the U.S. administration, it was Clinton that put Africa back on the map. And I say, "Thank you, Mr. President." And thank you for the modest things you are doing on East Timor, and I hope that in the last two years of his administration, he would forcefully support the emerging democracy in Indonesia, support the economic recovery, and use his abilities, his extraordinary energy and creativity, to bring about finally peace in East Timor.

And last but not least, let me share with you a story. A few years ago, I was driving from Lausanne, in Switzerland, to Geneva to attend yet one more of those almost futile exercises at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. I tuned in to the BBC, the only good thing the British ever invented. I know it is a wild exaggeration, and my sincere apologies to any British subject in the room, but it is my favorite radio station, the best anywhere in the world. I tuned in to BBC at 8 in the morning, and I heard this extraordinary news of a Soviet cosmonaut who had gone into space a few months earlier when the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union. And as he prepared his spacecraft to return to earth, the startling news came from Moscow: do not come back. Your country no longer exists. Just imagine someone out of Houston, Texas telling John Glenn, "Don’t come back." If it were with other U.S. politicians, I would like to hear someone telling them not to come back. But John Glenn, please come back. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The mighty empire-had ceased to exist. Someone, second thought from Moscow, told him, "Circle the earth a few more times." And he diligently did. Because in Moscow, it was disarray. No one knew what to do with him. Finally, after many hours, they brought him back to earth. The empire had ceased to exist. Armenia became independent; the Baltic States were liberated; Vaclav Havel, president of the new Republic of Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic; Poland; all the countries in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, became independent. Contradicting those who have told us year after year that we must accept the irreversibility of military occupations, the rule of force. East Timor, Tibetans, Burmese, Kurdish, we remember this extraordinary lesson and we will survive. We will win.

Thank you.


DISCUSSION AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS

Julian Bond: Thank you very much. Ladies, gentlemen, our schedule calls for thirty minutes of discussion by the panelists, followed by ten minutes of questions from the audience. I want to the take the moderator’s prerogative by beginning. Earlier this summer, there seemed to be some movement toward discussions of extending democracy, but lately, not much. And secondarily, what role does Portugal play in all of this?

José Ramos-Horta: I will start with the last point. Portugal has had a remarkable attitude in support of the struggle for East Timor. Having colonized East Timor for 500 years, they woke up to their responsibilities and, in spite of the fact that it is one of the poorest countries in Europe, they have put up a valiant effort in support of East Timor. The Secretary-General Kofi Annan-the best Secretary-General the U.N. has had in at lest thirty years-has also put enormous effort in this issue, bringing Portugal, Indonesia and myself to the negotiating table. There is a real, genuine move in Indonesia towards resolving this problem, in spite of, and we understand, their extraordinary problems, they also realize it is one of the most costly problems to them. But, as you know, in a situation of transition, like anyplace, there is lack of cohesiveness, lack of direction, lack of a central authority to make the necessary move. And we have to wait a few more months for clarification in Indonesia. Right now, we are discussing an autonomy plan presented by the U.N. That autonomy plan was drafted by a professor of ours at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and it is really a good, good plan. If Indonesia agrees with it, with minor changes as normal in the negotiation, we could have it by next year in place the implementation of this autonomy plan, lead in two, three, five years from now to a referendum to determine the final status of the territory. And I must say, my good friend, Oscar Arias, a few weeks ago we spoke on the phone, and I asked him to be the leader of advisors to the East Timorese negotiating team. And he agreed. When I informed my colleagues, they were all thrilled that Oscar Arias has accepted to be our advisor-someone who brought about peace in Central America when the two super-powers were fighting each other in Central America-it was that little country, Costa Rica, and Oscar Arias that brought about peace there. And that’s why I thought, "If he can pull that off in Central America, he can help us in East Timor."

Julian Bond: Colleagues, any member of this panel, the great hearts and minds, a question, a comment, a query? I can’t believe... Go right ahead.

Jody Williams: I do have a question, not specific to Indonesia and East Timor. You were talking about ignorance and prejudice being causes of conflict. And the reason I ask this question is because we are supposed to be contemplating how to resolve conflict often hopefully before it happens, and with a great emphasis on the new millennium and how we can teach the world to do things differently. So I ask the question: is the ignorance and prejudice the cause, or is it, as we saw in Rwanda and other places, those fighting for power exploiting the ignorance? And it may seem like a semantic difference, but I think it’s kind of important, because it then helps us decide how we go about preventing conflict. Because if it is the powers that be fighting for power, and using everything at their disposal, including arms of war, including ignorance, including prejudice, then we have to attack the problem from many different angles. So this is the question I ask: "How do we attack the problem-from the top down, from the bottom up, from all sides?"

José Ramos-Horta: Yes, certainly, I did not mean to attribute to ignorance, prejudice as the sole reason. There are others, such as often a nation’s quest for survival in terms of even water resources, mineral resources, and so on. But you are absolutely right. In Bosnia, in Rwanda, few individuals in their quest for power irresponsibly ignite prejudices and hatred by instilling fears in one given group. That is the example in Rwanda and Bosnia. And how to solve it? I tell you, I don’t have a clue. The only thing I could say is that yes, diplomatic intervention, mediation are obviously necessary, like you have in Bosnia. You know, there has been a lot of criticism of the Bosnia Peace Accord, but Richard Holbrooke did outstanding work in Bosnia, as he has done in Kosovo, and so on. Because at least guns fall silent.

But it does not address the root of our problem. And I still believe that in the long run, beyond the band-aid type of diplomacy which is peacemaking and signing treaties, you actually need to go for community dialogue. I was really surprised when I was in Greece recently, and I asked a Greek journalist whether, in the case of Cypress, there is much on-going dialogue between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. He said, "Yes, there is some, but not much." Because between the position of the Greek authorities in Greece and the Turkish government, there is something missing, and that is the people who inhabit that island, and if there is not much dialogue going by academics, by students, by labor leaders, by NGOs, then if you let it go on and on, then something that probably was false, was artificial a few years earlier, becomes part of the history, part of the culture. This kind of process of dialogue towards reconciliation, education towards peace, takes a long, long time. It does not produce the result that we all like in a peace treaty-signed between two parties as you have done in Bosnia and Kosovo, with the threat of force behind it. But that is the only way, I think. In our case, East Timor in the last few months, since January, we have been making appeals and appeals to our people on the ground: please, we don’t want to see one single Indonesian migrant touched; we don’t want to see one single house burned. Because with the collapse of the regime and because we have so many migrants in Timor, the temptation to exact revenge on them is great. So even before the collapse of Suharto back in January, we began a massive, active campaign of telling our people not to use violence on the innocent migrants. And so far, beyond some occasional verbal abuse, not one single Indonesian migrant has been harmed, and not one single house has been torched. But this process will take months and years.

Harn Yawnghwe: I know it might be a sensitive topic, but I was wondering if you could elaborate on this. Although President Habibie is initiating this dialogue with East Timor, I know that in Indonesia there are some people who fear that if East Timor is given autonomy, it might lead other islands within the Indonesian nation to ask for more autonomy. Are there people who might be in opposition to this move, and whether they are something that needs to be watched?

José Ramos-Horta: Yes, there is some genuine fear-unfounded, but genuine fear-on the part of some Indonesians because Indonesia is a huge archipelago of thousands of islands, 250 to 300 ethnic groups speaking 500 languages, they fear that letting go East Timor will set a precedent, and the ex-Soviet Union and ex-Yugoslavia scenario is not very much a good inducement to them to let go of Timor. But the fact of the matter is that East Timor was never part of Indonesia. East Timor is predominantly Catholic, 95%. Colonized by Portugal for almost 500 years. Culturally, ethnically, historically, it is different. So it does not fit into the Indonesian historical boundaries. Whether those fears are founded or not, the reality is that there are some people who fear that. But, at the same time, we say: but the longer you stay on in East Timor, the more costly it is for you, and that is when it could cause the unraveling of the Indonesian Republic. I, personally, do not believe that Indonesia could disintegrate just because East Timor becomes independent. It doesn’t work like that. You have to have real movement on the ground in Indonesia, of people wanting to separate from Indonesia for this to happen. And, so far, there are some protests in other parts of Indonesia, but by and large, it’s not over the question of independence or sovereignty, they just want more autonomy to deal with their cultural and economic matters. East Timor, therefore, is very unique in this regard. But increasingly, there are many, many people in Indonesia, including very important Muslim leaders such as Dr. Amien Rais who are calling for a referendum on self-determination in East Timor. There are people in the military, top in the military, who are also calling for a referendum in East Timor. So I believe if we, on our side, the Timorese side, are also responsible enough to be flexible and creative to enable the Indonesians to get disengaged from East Timor gradually, without loss of face, with honor, with dignity, and if we look into a long-term strategy, not seeking independence a year from now, or two years from now, who knows? In five, ten years from now, the new Indonesia would see an independent East Timor as very normal. And that’s our belief, and that is the strategy we are pursuing.

Julian Bond: Your co-recipient, Bishop Belo, has been engaging in some talks. How are these progressing?

José Ramos-Horta: Bishop Belo is a remarkable, extraordinary individual. He is in Timor, and he has been, particularly in the last few months, busy engaging the East Timorese society itself in approaches of reconciliation. A bit like in South Africa and other places torn by conflict, you have divisions within our own community-people who have collaborated with the occupation, and there is tremendous resentment towards those who collaborated. And so, we all are engaged in this process of dialogue, reconciliation, because although there is an ample opportunity now, a golden opportunity, to resolve the problem of East Timor, but if we don’t, at the same time, embark on a process of reconciliation, then we could lose this opportunity-if the East Timorese begin to fight each other over the past twenty-three years of collaboration with the Indonesian army. Because a lot of people, they collaborate for different reasons, for fear, for money, and our collaborators, we view them largely as victims of the whole war itself. And, I do not think that, in our case, that a society, a country, can heal itself if soon after victory, you embark on persecuting those who were on the other side. But at the same time, you are confronted with a dilemma. Look at the case of Chile-what to do with Pinochet? I am, personally, of course, on the side of the victims of the Pinochet regime, but if I were to confront an 82-year old man who has only two or three years more of life, and have to make a decision: put him on trial, in prison, or send him back home, I probably would be tempted to go to the softer side. But whenever I talk to the victims of Pinochet.... I was in Chile a year ago, I met victims of torture, women who were raped, and I was angry. Angry that the culprits were still there. But then when I see the old man, on the verge of going to jail, I say, "Probably best to just send him home." I am not very good at dispensing justice, as you can see.

Julian Bond: I think some of us in the United States look on the South African experience with envy that we did not, at a time in our country, begin this process. Perhaps it is not too late, but how can you embark on this process of reconciliation even before you’ve achieved your ultimate goal? Is it possible to begin now?

José Ramos-Horta: Yes, it is possible for two reasons. One, a pragmatic reason on our part that we must extend a hand to every Timorese, in order to reduce the field of maneuver of our adversary. The less people on the other side, the better. So, I’m not saying that our strategy is purely altruistic, purely moral. It is also political. And then, the second step is that if-the country is small, so many people have died already. And I tell you, frankly, no one is clean in this conflict in East Timor. We, the East Timorese, fought each other too, in 1975, and many people were killed unnecessarily. Indonesia invaded East Timor. It shouldn’t have done so; no reason whatsoever for a country invading another. But, at the same time, looking back, it was 1975, post-Vietnam, Cold War; maybe we understand Indonesia’s fears at the time, that an independent East Timor could turn into another Cuba. That was the argument at the time. Rightly or wrongly, that was their fear. And the U.S. post-Vietnam, having just come out of Indo-china-I also understand, why would they bother about East Timor? So, they turned the other way around and allowed Indonesia to resolve a potential Communist problem. The reality is that, in the end, we were the ones who were victims, remain victims today, and I just hope that we all seize on this opportunity to redress the wrongs done to the people of East Timor. And, first, yes, we have to be courageous enough, and humble enough-and both go hand-in-hand, courage and humility-to say that "Well, it is not Indonesia that is at fault, not only the U.S., or Australia." First we, the East Timorese, must ask ourselves, and address our responsibility in this conflict.

Julian Bond: Mr. President, let me turn to you, in your role as adviser.

What are you going to suggest be done that is not being done?

Oscar Arias Sánchez: It seems to me that the international community should support the East Timorese. And what you need is political will. The U.N. has taken this issue and Kofi Annan is very determined and committed and supportive. What you need for negotiations is patience, humility, political will, and the knowledge that you need to compromise. And certainly, the Indonesians should understand and should know that the international community is with the East Timorese, and there is not much I could add, but they deserve to become an independent nation and the international community should support them in this task.

Julian Bond: Thank you. If there are no other interventions from the panelists, we are close to the time to hear questions from the audience, and I believe questions have been collected and Professor Hopkins is going to read them out.


QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Jeffrey Hopkins: There are a great many questions and this one is to all of the Laureates, and perhaps we could start with Mr. Bobby Muller. What led you to believe that you could make a change?

Bobby Muller: It was the most natural thing for me to believe, honestly. You know, I had come down to Washington in 1978 and I was an angry Vietnam veteran. I had served in Vietnam as a Marine Infantry Officer, took a bullet through the chest, wound up paralyzed from the chest down. Came back and spent a year in a veteran’s hospital, and my hospital was the cover story of Life Magazine, and it was the second largest selling issue that Life Magazine had ever put out because it represented the deplorable conditions. And I oftentimes say that, despite the pictures of the overcrowding and the dilapidated facilities, that article could never convey the stench of that hospital, or the despair that permeated it. The fact that eight of my friends, including my closest friend, committed suicide is perhaps better testimony to those conditions. And I figured, having been a marine officer, and spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to kill people, day after day, that it was simply a matter of informing the American people about what was going on with its veterans-at least in some cases, as in mine-and that justice would be realized. And that I also didn’t know enough about my own circumstances to be able to tell that story.

So I went to law school and I got a law degree, and I realized that one of the very few places within our system of law that you don’t have the right to go to court is to petition any grievances against the Veterans Administration. So, I said, well that’s not going to work-maybe we need some new laws, and maybe we need some advocacy. And very honestly, as one angry guy, I went to Washington and I started to talk. And the second week I was there, the editor of The Washington Post editorial pages said, "Hey, I heard you talk, I like what you have to say, come on in and let’s talk a little more." And he wound up giving me and the effort that we put together, like thirty-five editorials in one year in The Washington Post and on the op-ed page. The New York Times picked it up. And when The New York Times picks you up, you wind up being on network television. So I did "Good Morning America" five times. Did the "Phil Donahue Show" seven times. And basically, got a message out there and the end result was we actually created a national organization. And we got a Congressional Charter in 1986. It took a bunch of years, but we got it. We set up programs for Vet Centers, we set up agent orange treatment facilities.

The long and the short of what I am saying here is that in this country, the truth is that we are a democracy. We actually have the machinery to exercise that democracy. It’s a little rusty, a lot of us have lost faith and confidence in the fact that you can really engage the gears and make it happen, but I had the good fortune of seeing a real success. So, in the work that I was doing-in going back to Indo-china and seeing the travesty that was played out in Cambodia, particularly with landmines-and coming to understand what was going on, I have a feeling in life that with knowledge, comes responsibility. And when you know about a situation that obviously 99% of Americans had not a clue, there’s a little bit of an obligation to carry that message home. And when you realize how devastating landmines are, you really have no doubt but that with an educated populace, that landmines will go on that same list as poison gas after World War I, and biological weapons, and chemical weapons, etc., that the world community says, "Yes, these mechanisms might kill people, but the overall costs of putting them into play are too prohibitive, and we’re going to outlaw them." And I-honest to God, as strange as it may seem-had absolutely no doubt but that we would get there, and get this weapon effectively banned. The only question we had was how much time it was going to take.

Jeffrey Hopkins: Perhaps the next question we should address to Dr.

Menchú Tum. What has sustained you in your long fight?

Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum: I am sorry. I don’t speak English [text follows through an interpreter, as do all of Dr. Menchú Tum’s remarks during the conference]. I believe when one is involved in a fight it is a daily fight. It is not an occasional fight, it is not to take advantage of a specific event. There are people who take special events to fight, but in my case, my specialty is that I was born Maya. And when people ask me about indigenous groups in the world, I am very partial. I believe that Guatemala lived through one of the bloodiest wars in Central America. We have been able to document 424 townships destroyed during the armed conflict. In this situation, unfortunately, I lost my parents, I lost many friends, I knew many people who struggled for justice and they never got to see the end of the war. And that’s why I think peace is not the result of one person, it is in the first place the conviction of everyone involved in conflict. And after, the building of peace is for the people themselves. It is for the children, not for the Nobel Laureates. We Nobel Laureates are a unique, privileged group, and we can push forward some processes. But the social actor is the most important, and I consider myself a social actor.

Jeffrey Hopkins: This is a question I think we should address to Archbishop Tutu. What impact did receiving the Nobel Peace Prize have on your ability to move toward your goals?

Archbishop Tutu: Well, it has the effect of turning you into an oracle. Things you said before you got the Nobel Peace Prize, and not too many people paid attention-you say the same things, and people think it’s pearls from Heaven!

Jeffrey Hopkins: Thank you. I think we should address this question to Betty Williams. Given that this historic meeting is taking place at the University of Virginia and in Charlottesville, which is a region historically situated as the birthplace of the founding institutions of the U.S. nation, do you have any advice for our often divided ethnic and religious conflicts in contemporary U.S. culture? As an African-American woman, I worry about how we resolve U.S. conflicts within; but we need help from the outside.

Betty Williams: That’s a huge question. There is great injustice in the United States. Anybody who denies that is blind or lying. I think that racism in the United States, right now-I liked it better when it was more out front, when you knew the enemy. It’s more insidious now. And I agree that outside help is necessary. Perhaps I agree because I live now in the United States of America and I am one who loves this country, but I also see the problems here. I mean, how dare we call a society democratic that has 12 million hungry children. There is no democracy where there is that kind of hunger. I sometimes get terribly confused, even within myself, because I have trouble with my own bigotries. When I am really pushed into a corner, the Catholic stands up, so I totally understand, as an African-American woman, how whoever wrote that question must feel. I think peace begins with me. Oscar just said that he disagreed with Rigoberta in that it is the individual that makes the difference. Whoever wrote that question, you have the power within yourself to change what is wrong in your society.

Jeffrey Hopkins: I’ll address the next question to Jody Williams. If ignorance is a key factor in the lack of peace, do you think that the Internet’s ability to share information quickly and universally will help us achieve peace?

Jody Williams: I think there is tremendous mythology about the role of the Internet in the landmine campaign. What was important in the landmine campaign, apart from many other things, was the desire to involve a huge array of groups and individuals immediately. We did that from the beginning through fax machines. When you are trying to bring together lots of people who have huge agendas of their own in their own organizations, you need them to believe that their immediate input in the growth of whatever you’re doing is important. So we used the fax initially. But it is also more than that. It’s the individual. It’s sharing information, but it’s making people believe they are part of the process. Not just information. Information by itself can be overwhelming. We got to the point with the speedy use of e-mail where colleagues in the campaign would say to me, "Stop sending so much information-why don’t you just send a summary?" So you can have too much information. And with this-I agree with Betty absolutely, completely: with individual responsibility, to want to make change, to take whatever the information is and decide how to use it to contribute to a process of change. Information, by itself, can’t do anything. It’s how you use it.

One other point I’ve worried about of late, is governments seeking, however, to restrict information on the Internet. I noticed there was recently a meeting in Spain-I was in Spain-and there was a meeting of police from around the world to deal with terrorism. And they were citing Mr. Bin Laden and his use of the Internet to set up his terrorist activities. And that may or may not be true, but what I worried about immediately was that the powers that be were going to use that kind of example, which may or may not be true, to try to crush actual, legitimate use of the Information Highway. I notice the same thing with the uprising in Chiapas. The combatants in Chiapas were able to use immediately the Information Highway to get their information out, and politicians immediately responded, "This is inappropriate, this is terrorism on the Internet," and I worry a lot that there will be a backlash and an attempt to stifle information. I think it is very complicated, actually, much more so than people seem to realize.

Julian Bond: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to take a fifteen minute break, and will return at 10:30 for the second of this morning’s sessions.