From the Place of Dead

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."" (June)