The Asian World - Occupation of East Timor

Indonesia occupied East Timor from Dec 1975 to Oct 1999. After centuries of Portuguese colonial rule in East Timor, a small-scale civil war, led to the pro-independence FRETILIN declaring victory in the capital city of Dili and declared an independent East Timor on 28 November 1975. Indonesian military forces invaded on 7 December and by 1979 had all but destroyed armed resistance to the occupation. Indonesia declared the territory a province of Indonesia. For twenty-four years the Indonesian government subjected the people of East Timor to extrajudicial executions, routine and systematic torture, massacres and deliberate starvation. Resistance to Indonesian rule remained strong; in 1996 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two men from East Timor, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta, for their ongoing efforts to end the occupation. A 1999 vote resulted in a majority in favour of independence, and in 2002 East Timor became an independent nation.