The movement for democracy, human rights and rule of law is irreversible. Even in this region, unprecedented events are taking place.
The overthrow of the military dictatorship in South Korea is of enormous significance for democracy and the rule of law in the entire Asian region. The brave people of Korea who endured decades of dictatorship, won the struggle for democracy by peacefully confronting the troops in the streets of Seoul and Kwangju.
For the first time in the history of Asia, former heads of states and other leaders are being prosecuted for crimes committed whilst in office. South Korea has challenged the myth of national security interest, which allows leaders to imprison, torture and murder with impunity.
It is ironic that the government of Fidel Ramos has joined its ASEAN partners in the campaign against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when the Philippines owes its restored democracy to the relentless struggle of its own people for human rights and the rule of law. In the course of their struggle, the Philippines appealed for and received international support. However, those in power today have forgotten if not betrayed the principles and values for which thousands of Filipinos gave their lives.

East Timor is another such example. But one needs to understand the geopolitical landscape of the time.
You might recall a picture that made headlines in the spring of 1975. I am referring to the picture of an American helicopter landing on the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon to rescue remaining diplomats, CIA operatives and the few privileged South Vietnamese stooges as the city fell to the Vietcong. Cambodia and Laos followed. This picture illustrated better than a thousand words the ignominious American retreat from Indochina.
It was in this geopolitical context that President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, visited Jakarta in early December 1975 as part of a tour to reassure Asian leaders that the U.S. would continue to honour its security commitments in Asia.
The invasion of East Timor, which began within hours of Ford's departure from Jakarta, was a mere footnote in the geopolitical history of 1975. The tens of thousands of Timorese who died in the days, weeks, months and years that followed were mere footnotes in the history books of the Vietnam and Cold wars.
In June 1974 I visited Jakarta, in my capacity as Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the Timorese Social Democratic Association, which had been created less than a month earlier. I had the privilege of meeting with the then Foreign Minister of Indonesia, Adam Malik. After our third round of talks, Mr Malik addressed to me a letter which read in part:
The independence of every country is the right of every nation, with no exception for the people of (East) Timor; ...whoever will govern in Timor in the future after independence can be assured that the government of Indonesia will always strive to maintain good relations, friendship and co-operation for the benefit of both countries.
In April 1975, I again visited Indonesia and met with President Suharto's senior adviser, General Ali Murtopo, to whom I reiterated our desire to develop friendly relations with Indonesia. Gen. Murtopo assured me that Indonesia harboured no territorial ambitions over East Timor. Our mistake was to believe these assurances.

More than two decades after the Indonesian invasion of 7 December 1975, the problem of East Timor has not disappeared. In 1991, a video camera in the hands of a courageous journalist recorded for the eyes of the world one of the many massacres that have taken place in my country since.
The massacre of 271 Timorese civilians in Dili on 12 November 1991 was not an isolated incident. It followed a well-documented pattern of gross and systematic human rights abuses in many parts of East Timor perpetrated by members of the Indonesian armed forces. The highest-ranking officers in the Indonesian army, in particular, the elite Special Forces Command (Kopassus) and its commander, Brigadier-General Prabowo, had full knowledge of, and took active part in, these operations.
The arrogance and brutality of the Indonesian army in East Timor was once again demonstrated on 23 March this year when a peaceful assembly of young Timorese was fired on by the army. During a visit to East Timor by the U.N. Secretary-General's personal Representative, Ambassador Jamsheed Marker of Pakistan, a group of 250 Timorese students went to the Hotel Mahkota in Dili to deliver a petition to Mr. Marker.
While most students waited outside, a small delegation entered the hotel at about 7 am, requesting to see Ambassador Marker. They were met by an aide to Mr. Marker who received the petition. Following the meeting, Indonesian troops and police opened fire on the students at the hotel. Bayonets and batons were also used against them. Four students were killed and at least 20 are seriously injured.
There is a wealth of evidence which illustrates the routine use of ill-treatment and torture by the Indonesian military. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye of Senegal, who visited East Timor in July 1994, has detailed a pattern of widespread abuses in my country.
His report was preceded by an earlier report by the then Special Rapporteur on Torture, Prof. Peter Kooijmans of the Netherlands, who happened to be in Dili on 12 November 1991.
The U.S. State Department annual report devotes a large section on the human rights situation in East Timor and I commend it for the honest effort in presenting the tragic reality that is life in the territory.
In April of this year the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution condemning Indonesia's human rights violations in East Timor, by a majority of 20 against 14 with 18 abstentions. This is the first open vote since 1983.
Through such resolutions, the international community sends a clear message to the Indonesian military regime that its brutal occupation of East Timor, torture, summary executions, arbitrary arrests and disappearances must come to an end.

The right of the people of East Timor to self-determination is widely recognised in several U.N. General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.
Colonised for almost 500 years by the Portuguese, it is a nation that has forged a strong cultural and religious identity; an identity that in its current form is older the history of white settlement in Australia, and predates by more than two centuries the birth of the United States. East Timor is a nation with an identity that is older than most Latin American and African states.
Our demand for self-determination -- to shape our own destiny and pursue our own unique way of being -- is not a threat to Indonesia. No one could seriously suggest that it ever has been.
But I can understand the concern of countries to preserve their national unity and territorial integrity. Many developing nations, Indonesia being a prime example, experienced a traumatic nation-building process, with numerous attempts from within and without to undermine the unity of the state.
But the way forward is for governments to be sensitive and wise about the basic demands of their own people. In most cases, these demands are not for secession. They ask to be allowed to survive as a people with a language and a culture. They ask that their land and environment be protected from rapacious multinationals.

If in a referendum under U.N. supervision the people of East Timor vote for independence, we will create a nation founded on the highest principles of international law, good governance and human rights.
We will not have a standing army, but rely on a Treaty of Neutrality to be guaranteed by the Permanent Members of the Security Council. We will declare the seas surrounding us to be a Zone of Peace and Development, and promote a total demilitarisation of the East Asia and Pacific regions. We will ratify all international human rights treaties, establish a fully representative democracy with a free media, and proclaim a general amnesty as the first step toward national reconciliation.
We will provide free education and health care, funded by money that would otherwise have been used to maintain a standing army. The estimated 200,000 Indonesians who have migrated to our country, most of them poor, will be welcome to stay, and with us help build a better home.

No one is free from responsibility in the East Timor tragedy. Portugal, Australia, Japan, the U.S., the U.K., France, the United Nations -- these have all failed the people of East Timor.
However, as much as we can assign blame to these countries, we can also understand their motives, their fears and even their indifference. Portugal was severely handicapped by its own internal upheaval in the post-empire period of the 1970s. The U.S., having just been forced into a humiliating retreat from Vietnam, was not in a position to play any leadership role on this issue even if it wanted to. My point here is that it would serve no useful purpose to assign blame to any particular country.
We, the Timorese political leaders, cannot escape our own collective responsibility. In 1974-75, we were immature and irresponsible. Some of us introduced certain political rhetoric that alarmed Jakarta. Indonesian leaders were worried about the rise of anything that looked like communist influence in the territory. The traumatic 1965-
66 turmoil in Indonesia and the post-Vietnam realities profoundly impacted upon the policy-makers in Jakarta.
But in all this, there is one single truth: the only victims were the people of East Timor. And more than two decades since Indonesia's invasion, the people of East Timor remain victims. They remain captive to the traumatic but now distant memory of Vietnam, captive to a Cold War that no longer exists.
They have made it abundantly clear that no amount of force will ever be enough to subjugate their will. That nothing will overcome their desire to be the masters of their own destiny.
I can only hope and pray that those in power in Indonesia can summon enough courage, humility and inspiration -- looking back upon their own epic struggle for independence from the Dutch &endash; and change course on East Timor.
A few weeks ago I travelled at short notice to South Africa. I was summoned by President Mandela for an informal discussion following his historic two-hour meeting with Xanana Gusmao. President Suharto displayed wisdom and statesmanship in acceding to Mandela's request to meet Xanana.
While I cannot elaborate on my conversation, or on Xanana's conversation with President Mandela, I can say that we welcome President's Mandela intervention. We can all hope that this is the beginning of a new impetus in the U.N.-mediated efforts to bring about a resolution of the conflict in East Timor.

The world has changed dramatically in the last few years and the theories of irreversibility and status quo of the modern nation-state have been discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Who would have thought it possible that the great Armenian people, persecuted for hundreds of years, would regain a country called Armenia?
It once seemed as if the entire world conspired against the Eritrean people in their 30-year struggle against Ethiopia. Today, Eritrea is a nation, and a shining example to the rest of the world.
Who would have thought that when the playwright Vaclav Havel was again arrested in a cold Prague morning in January 1989, that by the end of that year he would be residing in the presidential palace?
Only a decade ago, few would have imagined that a political prisoner languishing in jail for 27 long years would one day emerge as the President of a new South Africa.
Nelson Mandela is the living proof that nothing is irreversible, no regime is eternal, and empires do not last for ever.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.