Ramos-Horta, José Manuel (1949- )

Timorese freedom fighter and politician, president of East Timor from 2007; he was prime minister 2006-2007. 2006-2007. After Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, living in exile, he became permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) for Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária do Timor Leste Independente; Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor), the nationalist movement that had briefly governed the country in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996 with Timorese Bishop Carlos Belo. In 1998, he resigned from Fretilin to become an independent politician. After returning to East Timor in 1999, Horta was appointed foreign minister in late 2000, under the UN Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) that was put in place to help pave the way to statehood. He remained foreign minister after independence in 2002 and in June 2006 became prime minister.

From 1970 to 1971 he was exiled to Mozambique for ‘subversive activities’ against the Portuguese colonial regime. He returned to briefly become minister of external relations and information in the provisional government after independence. This lasted only months before Indonesia's illegal invasion and annexation of East Timor in late 1975. Horta fled three days before the Indonesian invasion, and from exile he drew the UN's attention to the annexation, causing the UN Security Council to condemn the invasion outright. From bases in Australia and the USA, he travelled the world for more than two decades, until Indonesia's withdrawal after the August 1999 vote for independence, to raise international awareness about Indonesia's activities and lobby for a free East Timor. Despite being nominated by the UN for the presidency of the East Timor National Council (ETNC), the interim legislature appointed by UNTAET, he lost the April 2001 election to the independence campaigner Manuel Carrascalao.

Ramos-Horta was born in Dili and educated in a Catholic mission in the village of Soibada. Between 1969 and 1974 he was a radio and television correspondent. He received a master's degree in peace studies from Antioch University, California, and a Fellowship in International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford, England. He studied at The Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands and the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. During his time in exile, he became the executive director of the diplomacy training program in the law faculty at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He was the representative of the imprisoned resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, until the latter's release in 1999.

His diplomatic experiences are recounted in his book Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor (1987).