SINGAPORE, 21 August 2003 — Asia yesterday mourned the killing in Baghdad of top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, hailing the diplomat’s role in shepherding East Timor to independence and helping hundreds of thousands of refugees across the region return to their homelands.
Vieira de Mello’s stints in East Timor, Cambodia and Bangladesh endeared the Brazilian to political leaders, diplomats and ordinary people alike for his work in the region since the early 1970s.
The top UN representative in Iraq and at least 16 others were killed when a massive truck bomb devastated the UN headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday.
“I couldn’t sleep. It took me a long time before I went to sleep,” said N. Parameswaran, Malaysia’s ambassador to Singapore, who had known Vieira de Mello since 1976 and worked with him in East Timor. “In East Timor, I went through periods with him when we could have died many times... I have lost a very dear friend, but more than that, I think we have lost one of the finest diplomats in the UN,” he said on Singaporean radio.
The Singapore Foreign Ministry said “Sergio dedicated his life to the service of the United Nations and ultimately gave his life in the service of the United Nations.”
“He has many friends in Singapore who will remember his contributions to the UN and the ideals that he lived for.”
Flags flew at half-mast in East Timor, the world’s newest nation, which Vieira de Mello helped guide to independence from Indonesia in May 2002.
“East Timorese have lost a great friend and brother,” said Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta. “The UN has lost a very competent staff member and the international community has lost one of its intellects.”
Before his appointment to Iraq, Vieira de Mello, 55, had headed the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor.
East Timor, previously a Portuguese colony, voted in August 1999 to separate from Indonesia, sparking an orgy of violence and destruction by pro-Jakarta militias and some departing Indonesian troops.
Vieira de Mello arrived in the territory in November that year and stayed until independence, overseeing UN efforts to build a new nation from scratch.
In Cambodia, people also mourned the death of Vieira de Mello, who served as director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and was responsible for the repatriation of 370,000 Cambodians from Thailand in the early 1990s as part of the war-ravaged nation’s transition to normalcy and democracy.
Under the 1991-93 UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), he was lauded for the speed and security established for the refugees who at that stage had fled 25 years of civil war.
A visibly upset Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, a personal friend of Vieira de Mello, said: “He had done a wonderful job in Cambodia ... I want to express my deepest regrets for his death, and to the UN.”
Bangladesh also paid special tribute to Vieira de Mello, who helped refugees in the aftermath of the South Asian country’s 1971 independence war. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia sent a message to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan saying she was “profoundly shocked and deeply distressed at the death” of Vieira de Mello and other UN personnel as well as innocent civilians.
He was stationed in Dhaka in 1971 with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and helped deal with tens of thousands of Bangladeshis who fled during Bangladesh’s bloody war for independence from Pakistan.
