It was encouraging to see the Tribune give some editorial space to East Timor (“A new nation: No. 190,” Editorial, May 25).
Here is one of the poorest countries in the world with a population that has lost about 25 percent of it current total since it was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia. Yet here are people soberly building a democratic society who, as their Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta testifies, did not kill one innocent civilian of the occupying Indonesian population in all their years of struggle and resistance.
East Timor has suffered vastly more misery, death and brutality than the Palestinians and had nothing like the financial infusion from oil-rich countries or the West. This journey to independence should be reported in the Arab press as an object lesson for the Palestinians who have been betrayed by corrupt and murderous leadership for so many decades.
