| Subject: East
Timor's Belo urges forgiveness in Christmas message
East Timor's Belo urges forgiveness in
Christmas message
DILI, East Timor, Dec 25 (AFP) - East
Timorese must forgive each other and work together to build their country,
Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Belo said in a Christmas message
Saturday.
"This year in 1999, in the land that
we love, there was a lot of hate, people wanted to take revenge,"
Belo said during Christmas morning mass at a packed Dili cathedral.
"It started in April and went until
September. We all experienced it. We saw houses burned, houses looted,
people beaten. The people who did this did not love God. They did not love
each other," Belo said after several thousand Dili residents sang and
walked with him from another church to the cathedral.
"They are bad people because they
clashed with their own brothers ... They clashed with their own
fatherland, Timor Lorosae."
He was referring to the wave of militia
violence, supported by Indonesian armed forces, that destroyed much of
East Timor before and after the August 30 vote for independence from
Indonesia.
Untold numbers of people were murdered,
women were raped, and much of the population was forced out of the
territory or into the mountains.
Belo said those responsible must have
remorse and change themselves but he said "we must forgive each other
and still continue to love each other."
He called for peace within families and
also between political leaders.
East Timorese must "go forward with
the same vision for building East Timor with unity, solidarity,
collaboration and conjunction for all," Belo said.
About 1,500 people filled the cathedral
while others listened over loudspeakers outside. Thousands had earlier
walked about one kilometre (0.6 miles) in the hot morning sun from the
seaside Motael church to the cathedral.
The procession was led by a man holding a
metal crucifix wrapped in purple flowers and a curly white ribbon. Behind
him stretched two lines of young people in white and blue cassocks with
their hands pressed together in front of them.
About 80 nuns followed, then came Belo
who walked just in front of the citizens who filled the street behind him.
Many East Timorese also attended mass
late on Christmas Eve in this capital where people have built mangers out
of thatch alongside city streets to recreate the scene of Christ's birth.
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