各国名人英文介绍-José Ramos-Horta（在线收听）

José Ramos-Horta (born 1949) is the second Prime Minister of East Timor and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He has spent most of his life fighting for and serving his people. He was a founder of a group that fought against the Indonesian occupation of his country between 1975 and 1999. He was injured in an assassination attempt in 2008.

Ramos-Horta was involved in politics from a young age. When he was 25, he became Foreign Minister of the "Democratic Republic of East Timor". Three days after he arrived in New York to talk about independence for his country, Indonesian troops invaded and took over East Timor. He pleaded with the UN Security Council to end Indonesia’s occupation, in which 102,000 East Timorese died.

Ramos-Horta travelled the world for two decades to raise awareness of what was happening in East Timor. He often had hardly a penny in his pocket and relied on the goodwill of well-wishers. He got the Nobel Prize in 1996 for his "sustained efforts to hinder the oppression of a small people”. Several years later, East Timor would be free.

Ramos-Horta played a key role in negotiating East Timor’s independence. He became his nation’s first Foreign Minister in 2002 when East Timor joined the United Nations. He resigned from this post in 2006. A day later, the Prime Minister resigned, which led to political chaos. Ramos-Horta became Prime Minister two weeks later to end the turmoil. He became President of East Timor in 2007.