It's been a long time coming. Four centuries as an unknown colonial backwater, then a quarter of a century of genocide, deliberately ignored by the great powers of the world. War, famine, death, burnings, massacres, and still this tiny people resisted, unsupported and unregarded, with only the moral certainty that they must win, they must be free, eventually.
East Timor becomes free tonight. The first independent state of the twenty-first century is born from ashes at midnight tonight, as the 19th becomes the 20th.
Guests include President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose giant country of Indonesia bore down on the tiny colony in 1976 and tried to absorb it, little imagining the resistance its people would offer. Guests include Bill Clinton, whose ruthless country crushed freedom underfoot all across the world in the name of geopolitics and power. Guests include Prime Minister John Howard, whose craven country Australia was the only one in the world to acquiesce legally to the Indonesian dictator's bloody conquest, because they wanted a share of the oil wealth under the sea between them.
Their hosts include President Xanana Gusmão, the poet who led his people to freedom from a Jakarta prison cell after he was captured fighting. Their hosts include two Nobel Prize for Peace winners, Carlos Belo the Bishop of Dili who epitomized the conscience of his people, and José Ramos Horta who was foreign minister for the country that almost no-one wanted to know about. For 25 years their names have been those of heroes. We believed in East Timor. We marched for East Timor, wrote letters, wept, hardly dared believe it could end in freedom, against the brutal military machine of Indonesia and naked, selfish indifference of the West.
East Timor, known to its people in Tetum as Timor Lorosa'e, and in Portuguese and officially in the UN as Timor-Leste, becomes free tonight. A United Nations transitional administration ends, and the recently elected Xanana Gusmão, head of the Fretilin movement that led the fight for independence, becomes President. Mari Alkatiri becomes his prime minister. The black, red, gold, and white flag is raised. The world celebrates, at last.
For more information about independence celebrations: www.easttimor.com
The island of Timor lies at the furthest east end of the East Indies, near New Guinea. It was inhabited by people similar to New Guineans, then several thousand years ago a new people came from the west, speaking languages we call Austronesian. Of these today the most prominent on the island is Tetum. A few hundred years ago Europeans came to the East Indies looking for spices. The Dutch, the Portuguese, and the English seized what they could, traded, warred amongst themselves, and came to arrangements. The small island of Timor was divided in two, or to be more precise in three.
Portugal took over the eastern half, plus a little enclave on the north-west coast called Oecussi, where the first capital originally was. The Netherlands ran the rest of the western half. This continued quietly until the 1940s. Japan invaded everywhere in the area, and the Timorese suffered. The Dutch colonies in the Indies formed a nation called Indonesia, which became independent after the war, and somewhat aggressive towards its neighbours. The dictator Suharto seized power in 1965 and killed a million, perhaps millions, of opponents, calling them Communists or sympathizers. He had his eyes on the tiny Portuguese remnant on his eastern fringe.
Portugal too was ruled by ageing right-wing dictators. They were fighting bloody wars to hold onto their colonies in Africa. But in the early morning of 25 April 1974 tanks moved out of barracks in Lisbon. Most shops weren't open yet; a young woman was buying flowers before starting her job at a café. A young soldier approached her and asked her if she had a cigarette. "No," she said, "but I have a carnation."
One of the oldest dictatorships in Europe fell without bloodshed to troops festooned with carnations the rejoicing population gave them. The Carnation Revolution brought peace and freedom to Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and after a little while to East Timor. Several pro-independence parties arose, others arose favouring union with Indonesia. The main independence party was Fretilin, the Front for the Liberation of East Timor. They would have won local elections, but in August 1975 a pro-integration party seized power in the capital Dili. Fretilin fought them and took back power; amid this, in December 1975, Indonesia invaded.
East Timor never gave in. One of the greatest genocides in the twentieth century took place, largely ignored. East Timor's small population was hugely reduced by massacres and starvation. Henry Kissinger connived at it and supplied arms to the occupiers, Gough Whitlam recognized the annexation to get at the oil, though no-one else ever did, and the East Timorese people fought a bush war against all odds for over twenty years.
Finally the cold war was over, Suharto fell from power in Indonesia, the Nobel Prizes had brought independence leaders inescapably into public view, awkward questions kept being asked about the Australian and other journalists who had been slaughtered by Indonesian forces. The new, weak governments of Indonesia retreated, and East Timor was taken over by the United Nations. In one final act of defiance, militias funded and logistically supported by Indonesian generals went on a rampage and destroyed much of the infrastructure of the country and drove huge numbers of people out as refugees into the Indonesian-owned western half of the island.
To no avail, ultimately. A referendum was held. Yes, overwhelmingly, we want independence. A timetable was set, a transitional authority set up, elections were held. Xanana Gusmão would have preferred to retire and be a farmer, but his people wanted him. Tonight at midnight he becomes the leader of the world's newest country.
East Timor has survived. East Timor is free at last.