East Timor Independence
East Timor became independent on 20 May 2002, the first new sovereign state of the twenty-first century, after four centuries of Portuguese rule and twenty-four years of Indonesian occupation. Portugal abandoned the colony abruptly after its own revolution in 1974. A brief civil war among Timorese parties followed, and Fretilin declared independence on 28 November 1975. Indonesia invaded nine days later, with prior American and Australian knowledge, and annexed the territory as its twenty-seventh province in 1976 — a claim almost no state recognised and few actively contested. The occupation was extraordinarily violent. Estimates of the dead from killing, forced relocation and induced famine run from around 100,000 to 180,000, out of a pre-invasion population of roughly 650,000. Two things changed it. The Santa Cruz massacre in Dili in November 1991, in which troops fired on a funeral procession and killed some 250 people, was filmed by a British journalist and smuggled out, which made the occupation internationally visible for the first time. And the Asian financial crisis brought down Suharto in 1998. His successor B.J. Habibie unexpectedly offered a referendum. In August 1999, with 98 per cent turnout, 78.5 per cent voted for independence. Militias organised by the Indonesian military then destroyed the territory — around 1,400 killed, most of the population displaced, and some seventy per cent of buildings burned — until an Australian-led force intervened in September. The UN administered it for two and a half years. Xanana Gusmão became its first president. The truth commission documented the occupation in detail and its recommendations on reparations were largely ignored. Timor-Leste lives on offshore oil and gas revenue held in a sovereign fund, and remains among the poorest countries in Asia.
- Year: 2002 CE
- Category: Political
