I came across a subject about East Timor from an unexpected
article. I have been reading articles
about the Cold War, and there, just like popping from mid-air, the situation of
East Timor was mentioned. What I knew
about the country before was that it is a former Portuguese colony, and
Indonesian forces invaded it during the time of Indonesian president
Suharto. So it appeared to me that the
situation in East Timor was another case of annexation, which is usually
associated with economic interests; thus, something not right was going
on. Furthermore, it occurred during
problematic times in Portugal leading to its decolonization, so it made me
think that the Indonesian government during that time might be taking the opportunity to invade the colony.
The Cold War articles revealed interesting logical
connections with the East Timor invasion.
It also revealed that my knowledge about the invasion was very
limited. Yes, it is related to the Cold
War in many probable connections such as the case of what has been a fragile
relationship between UDT and Fretilin - the two leading nationalist movements
aiming for East Timor independence. UDT
is essentially democratic, as the name says; while Fretilin has a program considered
to gear towards the left wing (read "East Timor Revisited" for more
details). Fretilin, however, is known to have the
greatest public support.
Articles that I have read about the Cold War showed situations wherein superpowers tend to take sides in favor of movements in a foreign country that hold the same ideology as theirs. Ultimately, they get direct involvement when the clash of ideologies went worse into a war situation, e.g. civil war. Little did I know that the case with East Timor is somewhat related to the case of Vietnam War, Korean War, Cuba, and Afghanistan. I think you might be familiar with the scenarios in those countries, and superpowers such as USSR and/or US are visibly involved. In the case of East Timor, you might be interested to read an article by the Sydney Morning Herald. Think about how Vietnam was divided into North and South, whereas Korea is until now divided into North and South. These situations demonstrate acute cases of clashing ideologies. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has its own Soviet regime when the communist forces prevailed in that country sometime in its history. A more popular case is Cuba. As you might have known, the world was almost brought into nuclear war mainly between US and the former USSR because of the situation in Cuba. That was the Cold War, and it is a heavy subject matter.
I don't know a lot of things about East Timor so I think it
is worth to explore some things about this young independent state.
East Timor is located in the island of Timor in the
archipelago of Indonesia (see map below).
It's a small country that comprises approximately half of Timor, and it
was colonized by Portugal in the 16th century.
It became a sovereign state in 2002, but prior to that, the country
declared its independence in 1975. In
that same year, however, Indonesia launched its invasion of the territory in
December. The history leading to its
independence is bloody, and until now, peace and order is still prone to
disturbances. Its capital and largest
city is Dili. It has two official
languages: Portuguese and Tetum, and in distinction to its largely Islamic
neighbor Indonesia, majority of the people in East Timor are Christians by affiliation. It is home to two Nobel Peace Prize
laureates: Jose Ramon-Horta and Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.
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Time will come for a more peaceful Repúblika Demokrátika Timór-Leste.
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| Matthew Winterburn |
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| Janina Pawelz |
