S7 E2: Talking Environmental Justice, Peace, Democracy, and Activist Tactics with President José Ramos-Horta

S7E2 Transcript

[00:00] José Ramos-Horta: We need new global leadership. I am disillusioned, disheartened, but I want to hope that one day, in the midst of all of this, better leaders will emerge, will reinvent the United Nations, reinvent the multilateral institutions, and bring together all the countries in the world. 

[00:32] Jasper Nighthawk: You’re listening to the Seedfield Podcast, the show where Antiochians share their knowledge, tell their stories, and come together to win victories for humanity. I’m your host Jasper Nighthawk. For this season of the podcast, we’re focusing on some of the most exciting events from our university’s year of pro-democracy action, Antioch Works for Democracy. Today we have a very special episode, a conversation between José Ramos-Horta, the president of Timor-Leste, and Abigail Abrash Walton, the chair of Antioch University’s Environmental Studies Department. The two spoke several weeks ago at our Environmental Justice and Democracy Colloquia series, and they had a wide-ranging conversation covering issues of climate justice, activist tactics, how to ethically resist colonization, and our world’s strong need for new, bold leadership. We’re excited to give you a chance to listen in. Before we get to the tape, let me introduce President Ramos-Horta just a little bit, which I want to do because I think he’s a fascinating and inspiring figure. In the early 1970s, President Ramos-Horta, he wasn’t president yet, he helped lead the resistance movement that ended over 200 years of Portuguese colonization of East Timor. Timor-Leste is the Portuguese name for that country. I’m going to use that. So shortly after President Ramos-Horta and his fellow revolutionaries won Timor-Leste’s independence, Indonesia invaded and recolonized the country. When Indonesia sent in its tanks, President Ramos-Horta was out of the country. At the time, he was the nascent government’s foreign minister, and he’d gone to New York to try to rally support at the United Nations. But with Indonesia occupying Timor-Leste, he couldn’t go home. He ended up spending 15 years in exile in the US. During this time of exile, he was a tireless advocate for Timor-Leste’s freedom. He met with leaders from around the world at the UN, he lobbied politicians in Washington, and generally he worked to ensure that the world wouldn’t forget about his home country. This work led President Ramos-Horta to Antioch University, where he used the individualized Master of Arts program to design his own degree, an MA in Peace Studies. And when he, along with one of his countrymen, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, he drew on his Antioch Master’s thesis to come up with his Nobel acceptance speech. In 1999, an opening emerged to negotiate with Indonesia, and President Ramos-Horta helped lead these successful negotiations for Timor-Leste’s independence. He now lives back in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, and among many other governmental roles, he served as his country’s second president from 2007 to 2012, and in 2022, he was re-elected as president of Timor-Leste. I say this all to emphasize what a remarkable voice President Ramos-Horta speaks with. We’re so lucky to count him as our fellow Antiochian, and I think he really does embody many of the values that our university purports to stand for. If you want to know more about his story, I’m going to include a link to the cover story that I wrote about President Ramos-Horta for the Antioch Alumni Magazine back in 2021. That was a great chance where I got to ask him about his time at Antioch and so much else. It’s a rich document. I really enjoyed getting to write that story. For now, though, I’m really excited to share this important conversation between President Ramos-Horta and Abigail Abrash Walton. Here’s Abby. 

[04:12] Abigail Abrash Walton: It is such a pleasure to be here today with all of you for this very first colloquium in our four-part Environmental Justice and Democracy series in collaboration with Antioch Works for Democracy. I have the great privilege today of introducing you all to today’s colloquium guest, Dr. José Ramos-Horta, and as you know, Dr. Ramos-Horta is currently serving as the democratically elected president of the Southeast Asian nation of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, his second time in that critical role as head of state. Your Excellency, thank you so much for being here. I know that we have structured this as a conversation, and we have a lot to talk about because we are gathering at a historic moment when Timor-Leste is marking this 25th anniversary of the Timorese people’s vote for self-determination. I want to start by really reflecting back to the decades of engagement and leadership that you and others brought to building a successful campaign and a successful movement to bring about the establishment of democratic governance for Timor-Leste. I often talk with students about the fact that the impossible can take a little while, and I think for many of us in the international community, we wondered if we would ever see the success of the movement for self-determination in Timor-Leste. Of course, you and others led that effort to bring that about and did so extremely successfully. So if I could invite you to talk a little bit about how you did it, what are the lessons that we can learn? 

[06:02] José Ramos-Horta: Thank you for inviting me to participate in this colloquium. We celebrated the 25th year of the holding of the referendum, 23 years of restoration of independence. In the age of a person, a human being, 25 years is very, very young. In the life of a nation, even younger. Can you imagine what was the United States at age 25? What was any country in Europe, any country in Latin America at that time, 25 years? So we can say we have a fragile country. We readily accepted this definition, although the OECD countries, in a report several years ago, already wanted to have Timor-Leste declassified as a fragile state. But we, as with humility, prudence, we say no, we are still a fragile country. We are still building institutions of the state. The institutions are not yet strong enough, although we have already a deep-rooted culture of democracy. We do not have political violence. We do not have a religious base or ethnic-based tensions, least of all violence. We have absolutely correct and substantive relationship with all our neighbors, in particular with Indonesia, with which we had a conflict for 24 years. We reconciled with ourselves among the Timorese families, and we reconciled with Indonesia and with our neighbors. We have the best possible relationship with the major powers. The United States has a significant presence in Timor-Leste. We have a strong security and military cooperation with Australia and Portugal and our neighbors. We do not have a huge foreign debt. Our debt, which is only 13, 16 percent, is only to Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. We are very relaxed and free to talk about these issues. We have succeeded, progressed in moving from past conflict to peace and tranquility, rule of law. Well, A, our people are very well-informed, very politically minded. Our society in general knows the cost of conflict, knows the value of freedom, of democracy. So for us, it’s almost like a way of life, being free, being democratic, electing our leaders, our representatives, having a free media, free academia. We have many newspapers, many TV channels. We have over 130 radio stations and newspapers, abundant newspapers, although the market is very small. To achieve all of this, one key requirement is always leadership. Leadership is responsible for peace, for unity, for stability, and the leadership is responsible when there is no peace, no tranquility, because leaders are the ones that lead the country, society to peace, or lead societies, countries to conflict and war. So to achieve what we have achieved, we had a great leader, Mr. Shenanigansmao. He was 18 years fighting, leading guerrilla warfare in the country, then was captured, spent eight years in high security prison in Indonesia. In prison, he won the admiration, the friendship of the thousands of prisoners who were there. He shared the prison with many Indonesian democracy movement leaders who were in prison, and he gained the respect also of Indonesian military, the same people who captured him and who conducted a not very fair trial and sentenced him to life in prison. Throughout our struggle for freedom, for independence, in the course of 24 years, at the receiving end of violence, of abuse, of humiliation, we never touched a single Indonesian civilian. Indonesian military personnel that engage in military combat, often with our fighters, then captured by our forces, they’re taken to our base, they were cared for by our people. After a few months, they were released. So not one single Indonesian military was tortured and killed. But then many other factors contributed. The end of the Cold War, then a financial crisis in Southeast Asia, East Asia in ’97. It was that financial crisis that brought about the end of the Suharto era, replaced by BJ Habibie, a technocrat, and he decided in a very Habibie pragmatic fashion, let’s do two things. One, Indonesia must democratize. Two, we must resolve the problem of East Timor. So he addressed these twin problems, democracy, reformation in Indonesia, and resolving the conflict in Timor-Leste. And all of this happened, the onset of democracy in Indonesia, and the gradual progress of democracy, resolution of the conflict of Timor, thanks to the Indonesian army leadership that TNI, that agreed with it. The army leadership in Indonesia, they understood the whims of change, the necessity to change Indonesia. And we work with people. That’s another lesson. Not a single person can triumph alone. A leader needs people to lead. So you need people around you, technocrats, intellectuals, academic, political advisors. You need to inspire the people. You have to have people behind you. And that means you have to be able to communicate with the people, and they share your dream, your guidance, your project, and then you succeed. 

[13:17] Abigail: Wonderful. There’s so many lessons in the case study of Timor-Leste, which you’ve just described. And I’ve heard you talk about the power of advocacy when it’s focused persistently on a clear goal, about the relationships that you build to enable your success, for the leadership you bring in uniting people behind the cause. So many different lessons that are there that are just as relevant today for all of us. And I want to pivot just very tangentially to part of the story, which is transitioning, as you did, from in essence being the foreign minister for Timor-Leste for 24 years of Indonesian rule and the work that you did internationally to build a strong coalition and solidarity movement to support self-determination for the Timorese people, but also the pivot that other leaders like Shanana Guzmão had to make from being resistance leaders to actually governing an independent country. And again, I think Timor-Leste, under your leadership, the leadership of people like Shanana Guzmão, is an excellent case study to learn from. How do you make that pivot from advocate to leader in a governance sense?

[14:44] José: The transition was not an easy one. And I have to say, over the years, I came across many Indonesian diplomats, and they also never once offended me. They always greeted politely. With few, I even would go and have lunch with them. So we had a very civilized, antagonistic position. So the Indonesian foreign minister, once he was annoyed with me, the media, some journalists asked me about me, and he said, “Mr. Ramos Horta is an unemployed agitator.” Well, he was right, actually, because I actually didn’t have a pay job. I lived mouth to mouth, I lived on donations here and there. When I lived in New York, I made some extra little money doing translation work. I was an unemployed agitator. So when I became foreign minister, well, I knew all about international politics. I knew about the UN. I studied, I took courses. I studied public international law in the Hague Academy of International Law. I went to St. Anthony’s College in London, Oxford University for several months. And yet, I had next to zero experience in running a foreign ministry. But I asked many friends who came and helped setting up and doing training of our people, recruiting people, and so on. So my colleagues faced the same problem. The prime minister, he was never prime minister before. Ministers were never ministers before. But everyone learned, everyone made progress. We learned by making errors, trial and error. One example of how we have done well is this. In 2005, we got the first revenues from oil and gas. We set up a sovereign fund, modeled more or less after the Norwegian famous sovereign fund. The management of our sovereign fund is under our central bank. It is recognized as the best performing sovereign fund in Asia and the number three in the world. So these are the significant progress. We have more than 34% of women in our national parliament. The speaker of our national parliament is a woman. The minister of finance, which is a very key portfolio, is a woman. The minister of health, again, with a very big budget, is a woman. 

[17:38] Abigail: Well, that gives everyone, I think, a very clear sense of how much progress has been made since independence in 2002, and also a reminder that leaders are human. We all make mistakes, and it’s a question of how do we pivot, how do we recover, how do we lead even when we don’t always know the path ahead of us, and how do we find the right people and resources to help us in that journey. I want to turn to Timor-Leste’s natural environment, which is a biodiversity hotspot. You have globally significant ecosystems and endemic species. You have very high plant diversity. So would you talk about how Timor-Leste’s government is safeguarding and stewarding those extraordinary natural resources as part of our collective planetary wealth and for the benefit of the Timorese people and future generations? 

[18:35] José: We of course have to face climate change at the several levels. On land and in the seas. The two are interlinked. If the seas perish, no life will be on land, and vice versa. The pollution of the oceans affects also people living on land. So we try to tackle in two areas. On the land side, one of the basic things we do is replanting the trees that were taken from nature by us. In this regard, in terms of deforestation, we cannot blame anyone else. It is ourselves who have done that over decades. And we have been replanting of these mangroves in the coastal areas, trying to replenish our forests. I do whatever I have to do as president, participating in national campaigns as well as international forums like the UN Sustainable Development, the UN Climate Change Conferences, treaties and all of this. We are leaders with small island developing states. I am the honorary chairman, patron of one program called With One Seed. We planted trees, like one particular project in an area called Baguia, up in the mountains of Timor-Leste. The last 10 years, we’ve planted about 400,000 trees. Might seem small if you talk about the US, if you talk about Turkey, China, but I’m talking about Timor-Leste. And every tree is verifiable. I signed the first carbon certificate several years ago. And this carbon certificate sold in the carbon market brought to the communities several hundred thousand dollars in cash that we deliver to the communities that were involved. But on the sea, well, no one can protect the sea on its own. And if other countries pollute the waters, if other countries overfish, they overfish tuna, for instance. Tuna is a migratory species. We have plenty of tuna in the south coast of Timor. And yet we also have a tremendous illegal fishing. So it’s next to impossible for Timor-Leste alone to monitor our waters. We might even monitor, but we cannot do anything about it. We don’t have the resources yet. To have a successful maritime security to protect our exclusive economic zone from illicit activities that destroy, deplete fish stocks in Timor and in the world, it’s absolutely necessary that the international community, particularly the Western countries, eliminate their bureaucracy, facilitate money access, access to funding by countries like Timor-Leste. It is mind-boggling, asphyxiating, the bureaucracy of the European Union and other Western countries. We need serious, serious collaborative solidarity between the rich north and the poorer south. We need solidarity between east and west. Oceans belong to all of us. A part of ocean that is sick will affect the rest of oceans elsewhere. So we are very vulnerable. We are dependent, like all other islands in the region, like all other islands in the world.

[22:36] Abigail: Yes, and I hear very strongly the need for solidarity and for collective action in safeguarding these parts of our natural world. I want to turn to a different question, but I want to ask you to consider what advice you might offer to today’s Antioch students as they are seeking, as you have already done in your life and your career, to win victories for humanity and to advance environmental justice and democracy. What advice would you give? 

[23:05] José: For young people beginning their careers, I advise, please study the environment, study water resources. I have been speaking on water for the last 22 years. Yes, one of the big problems of humanity is fresh water. So study the sources of water. How can we access fresh water better, more effectively and cheaply? Because there is only 1% of the water existing in the world is accessible by humanity. How can we capture water from the air? There is already some rudimentary ideas, technology about it. How can we have other agricultural food that needs less water? Because current techniques, current rice production in Asia, in Africa, consume too much water. But I advise also the following to young people: study, study and study. Not to be average, but to be the best. To be the pride of your parents, to be the pride of your community, to be the pride of the country, to serve the country, to serve humanity. We are living in incredibly unhappy times, tragic times. In Gaza, Ukraine, in Yemen, in Sudan, the worst humanitarian catastrophe today in the world is in Sudan. And not on the front pages of the newspapers. And so we need new global leadership. I am disillusioned, disheartened, but I want to hope that one day, in the midst of all of this, better leaders will emerge, will reinvent the United Nations, reinvent the multilateral institutions, and bring together all the countries in the world. It is possible. We’ll see. [25:34] Abigail: What I hear you really bringing out in this advice for younger people is looking to the future where there is transformational leadership. Transformational leadership that can be collaborative across national borders, that can uplift common goals that benefit all of us, and that helps us to get past a lot of the really seemingly intractable conflicts in the early 21st century. For you in Timor-Leste, you have leadership that has been involved in the movement for self-determination over many years, and now has been governing and holding and building the country for many, many years. Can you talk about how you look to succession planning for strengthening the democratic institutions of your country? 

[26:30] José: The development of democracy, the strengthening of democracy, and the institutions of the state, we can call work in progress. And we cannot take for granted. The challenges are there all the time, and we cannot be blinded by power because there is always this temptation. Once leaders are elected, they forget the promises made to the people. Vanity takes over, or sometimes maybe not vanity, but the pressure of work makes them disconnected from the society they are supposed to be connected with and serve. So how, as in Timor-Leste, how to preserve our one democracy, the progress we have made, a democracy that has delivered, but not enough. We have had failings. Today, 22, 23 years after the restoration of independence, Timor-Leste should be free of extreme poverty. We should not have stunting. We should have healthy children, healthy babies, healthy mothers. We should be self-sufficient in food production. We are not. And we should have been able in 20 years to have a healthy society, free from the degradation of malnutrition, but we have severe malnutrition. So a democracy that doesn’t address these problems, a democracy that doesn’t address inequalities in society, a democracy that will be hijacked by the extreme right or extreme left. But the extreme right also will fail because the extreme right make false promises. We know that through history. 

[28:37] Abigail: Yeah, this is wisdom. Do you see any conflict between environmental justice as a goal and economic flourishing as a goal? Can those things exist together? 

[28:49] José: No conflict whatsoever. As long as we in studying, in planning, in execution, we know that we have to take care of Mother Nature. Mother Nature is fragile, has been severely wounded over the last 100 years. It is Mother Nature that gives us the land, the earth, gives us the rain, gives us the rivers, the oceans. So everything that we plan, there has to be equilibrium, there has to be balance. And that can be done through science and through absolutely careful planning, prudence. And so both can be achieved. Because our livelihood, our prosperity depends on the way we treat nature, how we treat our forests, our rivers. If we allow forests to be locked down by unscrupulous loggers, if we allow overfishing in our oceans, well, we all perish. So there is no conflict whatsoever. Of course, for countries that depend on non-renewable energy, we, Timor-Leste, we are dependent on non-renewable. But our contribution to CO2 emission is 0.003%. Countries that have polluted the earth are the big European, North American, industrial countries. And I presume they acknowledge that. But we should not continue to just point finger, blaming them. Because industrialization also brought a lot of benefits to humanity. We live longer because of the knowledge we acquired in the last 100 years. People live longer. People have greater comfort because of the knowledge we acquired in Latin. But the West has to be serious in responding to this truth. And the truth is we all share responsibilities for the planet. But there has to be also differentiated responsibilities, greater responsibilities of the United States, of India, of China, of Western Europe, and so on.

[31:40] Abigail: You’re calling for something incredibly important, which I would put again under the umbrella of transformational, visionary, collaborative leadership. Let’s figure out what the goals are. Let’s keep our eyes on those goals. Let’s figure out how we work together to achieve those goals. And let’s not penalize those who have the least resources. Let’s look for ways that those with the most resources can be helpful. I wonder if you can comment on the environmental justice and self-determination aspirations of those people living in West Papua. [32:15]: José: Well, Indonesia of today is not Indonesia of 25, 30 years ago. I believe that for the people of West Papua who want to see their province, their forest, their nature protected, better protected, they should find ways to reach out to the new Indonesia. In the past, we didn’t have that chance during the Suharto era. Even then, we reached out to Indonesian society. Indonesian democracy activists went to jail because of this. So it is possible for the people in West Papua to reach out to Indonesia, to Jakarta, to the elites, to the academics, to find a way to better protect the rights of the people in West Papua. Thank you.

[33:23] Abigail: Thank you, Mr. President, so much for today. So I wish you all success, President Ramos-Horta, with everything. And I hope the conversation continues. 

[33:34] José: Thank you very much to all of you at Antioch for giving me the chance back then to study in my free time. When studying with you, I did have great chance. I got some of the best professors helping me. One is Noam Chomsky, Roger Clark, a great professor of international human rights law, and a senior United Nations official called Francesc Vendrell. So I was able to have a trio of the best people guiding my studies. Thank you, Antioch. 

[34:19] Jasper: You can learn more of the details about this event and about the entire Antioch Works for Democracy initiative on the Antioch Works for Democracy website. We’ll include a link in our show notes. We’ll also link there to my 2021 profile of President Ramos-Horta. We’ll include a link to the PhD in environmental studies. And we’ll also include a link to the individual Master of Arts program in case you’re interested in pursuing your own specific intellectual interests on your own terms, the way that that program allows you to do. And who knows, maybe your master’s thesis will form the core of your own Nobel acceptance speech. We post all of these show notes on our website, theseedfield.org, where you can also find full episode transcripts, prior episodes, and more. The Seed Field podcast is produced by Antioch University. Our editor this season is Nastassja Green. I’m your host, Jasper Nighthawk. Our web content coordinator is Jen Mont. Our work study interns are Stephanie Peredes, Lauren Arianzale, Grace Kurfman, Danny LaPointe, Lisa Wisner, Tawana Shambly, Natalie Obando, and Diana Dinerman. We received additional production help from Karen Hamilton, Amelia Bryan, Adrian Applegate, Jamila Gaskin, Harold Hale, Margaret Morgan, Laurian Alexandre, and Melinda Garland. Thank you for spending your time with us today. That’s it for this episode. We hope to see you next time. And don’t forget to plant a seed, sow a cause, and win a victory for humanity. From Antioch University, this has been the Seed Field podcast. [END] 1