October 9, 2001

Contact: Linda Luckey, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, (785) 864-3516.

Nobel Prize winner to speak at KU

LAWRENCE -- Jose Ramos-Horta will speak on "Peacemaking: the Power of Nonviolence" at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, at the University of Kansas in the Kansas Union ballroom.

Ramos-Horta won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Peace for his work as a spokesman for human rights and self-determination. Until December 1999, he was in exile from East Timor for 25 years. The tiny island and former Portuguese colony of 600,000 people is located between the Indonesian island of Java and northwestern Australia. Between 1975, when Indonesia invaded East Timor, and 1981, a third of the population died. Four of Ramos-Horta's 11 brothers and sisters were among the dead.

As an exiled citizen, Ramos-Horta served as an ambassador to the United Nations for the East Timorese cause.

In 1996, Ramos-Horta and Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo received the Nobel Prize for Peace for "sustained efforts to hinder the oppression of a small people." The award brought international attention to Horta's efforts and to reports of widespread abuses conducted by the Indonesian authorities in their efforts to quell opposition to Jakarta's rule, the BBC reported.

In 1999, in a historic referendum, the East Timorese unequivocally expressed their will for independence from Indonesia. In December 1999, Ramos-Horta returned to East Timor to help rebuild from the devastation.

Trained as a journalist, Ramos-Horta was a radio and TV correspondent from 1969 to 1974. He has a master's degree in peace studies from Antioch University, Yellow Springs, Ohio. He studied public international law at the Hague Academy of International Law and human rights law at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France. He is a senior associate member of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, England.

The KU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Center for European Studies will sponsor Ramos-Horta's talk, which is free to the public.