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Timor Leste
Trading Partner: Cooperativa Cafe Timor.
Country Statistics:
- Total Population: 1,108,777 (2008)
- Life Expectancy: 67 years (2008)
- Per capita income: 460 USD (2008)
- Ethnicities: Austronesion (Malayo-Polynesian), Papuan, Chinese
- Major export products: coffee, sandalwood, marble
- Industries: printing, soap manufacturing, handicrafts, woven cloth
Background
Unknown to many North Americans, Timor Leste ("East Timor") is located in Southeastern Asia, on the southernmost edge of the Indonesian archipelago, northwest of Australia. The country was colonized by the Portuguese in 1515 who exploited the sandlewood production until the point of near extinction. In 1815, coffee, sugar cane and cotton were introduced and up until World War II, Timor Leste remained a severely underdeveloped, export-oriented economy. Despite the "transition to democracy" that followed the Portuguese occupation, Timor Leste came under the rule of Indonesia after a brutal process of annexation in the '70s.
When the new left-wing Portuguese government relinquished all its colonies in 1975, Timor Leste enjoyed (literally) a few days of independence. When Timor Leste declared its independence on November 28, 1975, Suharto’s Indonesia responded by invading the country nine days later. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian dictator General Suharto hours before this invasion, giving him a de facto green light for the aggression, beginning a long history of U.S. government complicity with Indonesian repression of the Timor-Lesteese. Timor Leste is still reeling from its recent struggle for independence from Indonesia and decades of neglect by the international community.
The U.S. continued its support for Indonesia’s armed forces (then called ABRI, now TNI), supplying $1.1 billion in weapons in the 1975-99 period. During this period, the ABRI napalmed and displaced entire villages and disappeared, raped, tortured, and murdered civilians in an attempt to break the backbone of the resistance. More than 200,000 Timoreese, a third of the pre-invasion population, are estimated to have died as a result of this repression—either directly at the hands of the Indonesian police and military or indirectly as a result of starvation and disease.
Until 1991 the world community had all but ignored these atrocities. On November 12, 1991, ABRI soldiers opened fire on a funeral procession, killing 270 Timorese. This massacre, recorded by British cameraman Max Stahl, brought Timor Leste to the fore. International solidarity movements, like the East Timor Action Network/U.S., emerged to pressure foreign governments to withdraw support for Indonesia’s occupation. Timor Leste's independence struggle gained wider recognition when, in 1996, Bishop Carlos Belo and exiled resistance leader Jose Ramos-Horta, both Timor-Lesteese, received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Finally in August 1999, a UN-sponsored referendum for independence was conducted in Timor Leste. Despite the widespread repression, some 98 percent of the population came out to vote, with more than 78 percent opting in favor of independence. Again, the Indonesian military responded with a rampage, killing some 1,500 people, displaced three-quarters of the population and destroyed more than 75% of Timor Leste's infrastructure. Despite all, in May 2002 Timor Leste was internationally recognized as the world’s newest independent state and democracy.
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