From the Place of the Dead
The Epic Struggles of Bishop Belo of East Timor
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Christopher Award, From the Place of the Dead is the definitive account of one of the worst human rights tragedies in contemporary history.
East Timor's struggle for independence under Indonesian occupation has dominated international headlines. Now, as UN troops uphold the August 1999 referendum calling for the island nation's self-rule, From the Place of the Dead offers the only up-to-date, comprehensive analysis of the confrontation through the eyes of one of the most extraordinary leaders to emerge from the crisis.
Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996, has been a fearless guardian of the basic human rights of the East Timorese people. Arnold Kohen's intimate knowledge of the political, religious, and social history of the region paints a penetrating portrait of this beleaguered nation and reveals the extent of international complicity in the violence.
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Kohen's absorbing biography of Roman Catholic bishop Carlos Filipe Belo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his human rights work in East Timor, should draw public attention to the tragedy of the island territory and former Portuguese colony, which was brutally invaded in 1975 by Indonesia and has been occupied by it ever since. A former NBC News reporter who has written for the Nation, Kohen traveled with Bishop Belo in the lush but impoverished and terrorized East Timor countryside between 1993 and 1997. He shows that Belo's crusade for East Timor's independence has deep personal roots. In 1948, at the age of three, Belo lost his father, who died as a result of severe wartime beatings inflicted by the Japanese. In 1981, Belo's brother, uncles and cousins were used as "human shields," forced to march in front of Indonesian troops to flush out guerrillas. Kohen attributes Belo's fierce sense of identity and stubbornness (he persevered despite death threats in a land where so many other activists have been killed) to his membership in one of East Timor's oldest ethnic groups, the Makassae. He exposes Vatican arm-twisting intended to bully Belo into silence and details the bishop's frustrating relations with the Clinton administration, which has mostly remained silent about East Timor. Kohen reports that East Timor is gradually being taken over by Indonesian immigrants in much the same way Tibet has been colonized by China--hence the Dalai Lama's eloquent introduction, supporting a people "trying to keep their own culture and identity alive."
