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Nobel Peace Prize, Belo, Xanana and sex abuse
In 2019, when the Vatican heard of these allegations committed by Belo in the 1990s (!), they imposed sanctions a year later.
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Nobel laureate Bishop Carlos Belo (right) is greeted by followers on Oct. 17, 1999, following a Sunday mass at Dili Cathedral. (AFP/Erik de Castro)
I
t is the Nobel prize season again! From the five Nobel prizes in the field of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, economics and peace, given the current state of the world, I was particularly interested in the Nobel Peace Prize.
This year it was awarded to jailed Belarusian-activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights-group Memorial and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties. There were 343 candidates who must have given the Nobel Committee a headache as to whom to award.
I am sure that this year’s recipients deserve the prize. But given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in the worst conflict in Europe since World War II, I would not be surprised if there were a political motivation behind the choice(s). But then, these days, everything is political, and perhaps in this case, somewhat Eurocentric as well? I mean, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, West Africa and the Central African Republic have been hotspots long before Ukraine.
Was awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, nine months into his presidency, also a political decision? It was ironic that Obama turned out to be “the first president in American history to be at war for his entire administration, and […] responsible for the rise of the worst Islamic terrorist organization on Earth, ISIS, and fostering its expansion to 30 countries on three continents”.
Oh well, nobody is perfect, and people, presidents and leaders in general, are unpredictable, and certainly “political”, to say the least.
Now, closer to Indonesia, in Timor Leste, we have another Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, whose ethics and behavior were recently brought into the spotlight. In 1996, along with Timor Leste President José Ramos-Horta – an independence icon - Belo was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, for working "toward a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor".
Recently, De Groene Amsterdammer, a Dutch independent newsweekly magazine, published testimonies of alleged victims of sexual abuse by Bishop Belo, who was apostolic administrator of Dili from 1988 to 2002. The victims were then minors -- it is believed that Belo committed the crimes for several years.
