MANILA, Philippines—Timor Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta on Tuesday said religion should not be used as the basis for any people’s movement.

The winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize explained that the experience of the predominantly Catholic Timor Leste in the struggle against the mainly Muslim Indonesian invaders showed the benefits of separating religion from politics.

Ramos-Horta’s remarks were particularly significant to the Philippines as alleged “lost command” units of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had occupied several villages in North Cotabato and committed atrocities against residents including Christians in the area.

“We never manipulated religion… We never used religion to advance a cause,” he said Tuesday in a public forum at the University of the Philippines’ College of Law.

Ramos-Horta explained that isolating the political struggle from religious belief resulted in Timorese people’s respect for Indonesian civilians and made the “friendship” and reconciliation efforts easier with Jakarta.

“Not one single Indonesian civilian was killed by the resistance. Not one in 24 years,” he said referring to the years after Timor Leste came under Indonesian control in 1976.

Ramos-Horta was responding to a question on how peace in the region could be pursued and maintained by the countries and other stakeholders.

He said the youths in both Timor Leste and Indonesia were now playing a major role in establishing ties of friendship and reconciliation between the two peoples.

Ramos-Horta delivered a lecture and answered questions on peace, reconciliation and the Timor Leste experience at the very hall that would have played host to him and Timorese resistance leaders in 1994.

He was stopped from entering the country because of lobbying by the Indonesian government at that time.

Looking back, Ramos-Horta said efforts of the Indonesian and Philippine governments to stop him from delivering a speech on the situation of the East Timorese under the Jakarta government worked in his favor.

“If we had been allowed to enter and speak before the forum, it would have just been another forum... Because of the mishandling of the Indonesian government and the uproar it generated, we were able to draw international attention to East Timor,” he said.

Ramos-Horta said the international attention generated by the fiasco in Manila hastened East Timorese independence.

Five years later in 1999 and with support from the United Nations, Timor Leste broke free from Indonesia. In 2002, it became a sovereign state.

“When the Philippines finally found itself free from the dictatorship [in 1986], I said it was only a matter of time before East Timor was also freed,” Ramos-Horta said referring to what he called a trend of countries being freed from oppression at that time. “You started it,” he said.

“Of course, it took more time than I thought it would,” he added, drawing hearty laughter from the audience.

Ramos-Horta also said he had fond memories of former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., who led the anti-Marcos efforts in the United States. He said he listened to the Filipino martyr’s lectures in Boston in the early 1980s.