Timor-Leste Becomes Independent

On 20 May 2002, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste emerged as the first newly sovereign state of the twenty-first century. This milestone in Dili represented the formal end of a prolonged decolonisation struggle and years of direct international governance. European contact had begun in the sixteenth century with Portuguese merchants drawn by valuable regional exports of sandalwood. Portugal and the Netherlands contested the island for centuries, and Portuguese sovereignty over its eastern half was settled by treaties in 1860 and 1893, the latter taking effect only in 1914. That colonial boundary eventually became the border between modern sovereign neighbours.

Following Portugal's 1974 revolution, debates among local political factions regarding the territory's destiny led to a brief internal conflict in 1975. The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, known as Fretilin, fended off a coup attempt by the Timorese Democratic Union and issued a unilateral declaration of independence on 28 November 1975. This nascent autonomy was quickly extinguished on 7 December 1975, when neighboring Indonesia launched a military invasion. In 1976, Indonesia incorporated the territory as its twenty-seventh province, an integration the United Nations never recognized; both the Security Council and the General Assembly called for Indonesia's withdrawal.