Sakharov Prize
European Parliament

Xanana Gusmão – 1999, East Timor

Once the leader of East Timor’s (Timor-Leste’s) struggle for freedom and self-determination, Xanana Gusmão became the nation’s first president and later served as its prime minister.

Gusmão's political career began in the 1970s with the movement to assert East Timor's independence from Portugal. It took more than two decades of hard struggle for an independent East Timor to be born. Just days after its declaration of independence following Portugal's unilateral withdrawal in 1975, Indonesia invaded the country, crushing resistance with force. The violence that followed the invasion is estimated to have cost 200 000 lives.

Known by his nom de guerre 'Kay Rala', Gusmão joined the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor and was elected by its first national conference as leader of the resistance and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor.

As resistance leader, Gusmão conceived and implemented a policy of national unity, the success of which led to the formation of the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), where Gusmão managed to bring together the various political and social groupings.

Gusmão was taken prisoner by Indonesian forces in 1992, a year after the world's attention was finally captured by the massacre of more than 250 people at a memorial procession in Dili. He was imprisoned in Indonesia on charges of separatism. In prison, he studied Bahasa Indonesian, English and law. He also wrote poetry and painted artworks that were sold to finance the resistance he continued to lead. Together with his vice-president in the CNRT, Jose Ramos Horta, Xanana Gusmão sought to secure a peaceful solution to the conflict by crafting a peace plan that included a UN-supervised referendum on the future of East Timor. He was visited in jail by a number of high-level personalities, including South African President Nelson Mandela and UN and US representatives, as it was clear that he would maintain a pivotal role in ending the war with Indonesia.

Gusmão had just been released from prison in 1999 following huge international pressure, having served seven years of his 20-year term, when the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize. The prize acknowledged his role as the leader of the Timorese resistance and symbol of his people's fight for freedom. When freed - shortly after the UN-sponsored referendum of 30 August 1999, in which 80 % of the population of East Timor voted for independence, heralding the end of the Indonesian occupation and the beginning of the transitional process led by the UN - Gusmão promised 'to do everything in my power to bring peace to East Timor and my people'.

In April 2002, Gusmão won the first free presidential elections held in East Timor with huge popular support. On 20 May 2002, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan officially declared the Democratic Republic of East Timor an independent state and Gusmão served it as president until May 2007. In 2008, while serving as prime minister, he survived an assassination attempt. He resigned the premiership in February 2015, wishing to make space for a younger generation of leaders, and served as minister for planning and strategic investment. In 2018, he concluded negotiations with Australia on maritime border delimitation as the representative of East Timor. His coalition of political parties won the elections in May 2018. After the elections, he became adviser to the new prime minister.