The President of the Republic of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, compared China’s role in the modern world, as a country that the countries of the Global South can always count on for help, with the role of the Soviet Union in the 20th century.
Ramos-Horta said in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore today, Sunday: “In the early nineties, I met a young diplomat from Somalia at the Palais des Nations in New York. We talked a lot about the problems that worried the world at that time. And he told me: now the Soviet Union has collapsed, and we have no one to turn to for real help.”
He continued: “In the past, when Western countries lectured us on human rights and refused to help us, we turned to Moscow and received help. Now we are left alone, we have no one to go to, and no one will help. us, as this diplomat told me at the time,” adding that it was not only about Somalia, but about the entire Global South, the development of which was strongly influenced by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“If we go back to 2023, we will see that China is now a world power and a magnet for the countries of the global south,” Ramos-Horta said. “I haven’t seen my Somali friend for a long time, but maybe today he would say – we not alone now, now we can help China.”
Describing the current situation of the Global South as catastrophic, the President of East Timor noted that without external assistance, many countries in the region are at risk of falling into poverty and chaos, while the Global North continues to grow, but does not provide enough assistance to the Global South on vital issues such as as ensuring that its people have access to clean water, food security, health care and education.
East Timor, a former Portuguese colony and then an Indonesian province, gained independence in 2002, becoming the first new country in the world to emerge in the twenty-first century.
Source: News