Portuguese Timor refers to East Timor during the historic period when it was a Portuguese colony that existed between 1702 and 1975. During most of this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Dutch East Indies.
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian independence activist and poet who earned the sobriquet of Nightingale of India. She was born in a Bengali Hindu family at Hyderabad and was educated in Chennai, London and Cambridge. She married Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu and settled down in Hyderabad. She took part in the Indian nationalist movement, became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and fought for the attainment of Swaraj or independence. She became the President of Indian National Congress and was later appointed as Governor of the United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh. She was the first woman Governor of the Republic of India. Known as the 'Nightingale of India', she was also a noted poet. Her poetry includes children's poems, nature poems, patriotic poems and poems of love and death. She also wrote poetry in praise of Muslim figures like Imam Hussain, in a time where Muslim-Hindu tensions ran high in pre-independence era. Issues regarding the split of India into a Muslim country and a Hindu country have already begun, and as she had got an inter-caste and inter-regional marriage in a time where this was uncommon, her goal was to bring all of India together regardless of religion.
East Timor is a country in Southeast Asia, officially known as Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. The country comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor and the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco. The first inhabitants are thought to be descendant of Australoid and Melanesian peoples. The Portuguese began to trade with Timor by the early 16th century and colonised it throughout the mid-century. Skirmishing with the Dutch in the region eventually resulted in an 1859 treaty for which Portugal ceded the western half of the island. Imperial Japan occupied East Timor during World War II, but Portugal resumed colonial authority after the Japanese surrender.
The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor is a leftist political party in East Timor. They presently hold 23 of 65 seats in the National Parliament and serve in the opposition. Fretilin formed the government in East Timor from independence until 2007. The party began as a resistance movement that fought for the independence of East Timor, first from Portugal and then from Indonesia, between 1974 and 1998. After East Timor gained its independence from Indonesia, Fretilin became one of several parties competing for power in a multi-party system.
The national flag of East Timor is one of the official symbols of East Timor. It consists of a red field with the black isosceles triangle based on the hoist-side bearing a white five-pointed star in the center superimposed on the larger yellow triangle, also based on the hoist-side, that extends to the center of the flag.
East Timor's music reflects its history under the control of both Portugal and Indonesia, who have imported music like gamelan and fado. The most widespread form of native folk music was the likurai dance, performed by women to welcome home men after war. They used a small drum and sometimes carried enemy heads in processions through villages; a modern version of the dance is used by women in courtship.
Christopher Wenner, now better known as Max Stahl,, is a British journalist and former television presenter.
Falintil originally began as the military wing of the political party FRETILIN of East Timor. It was established on 20 August 1975 in response to FRETILIN’s political conflict with the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT).
The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, known in Indonesia as Operation Lotus, began on 7 December 1975 when the Indonesian military invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism. The overthrowing of a popular and briefly Fretilin-led government later sparked a violent quarter-century occupation in which between approximately 100,000–180,000 soldiers and civilians are estimated to have been killed or starved to death. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor documented a minimum estimate of 102,000 conflict-related deaths in East Timor throughout the entire period 1974 to 1999, including 18,600 violent killings and 84,200 deaths from disease and starvation; Indonesian forces and their auxiliaries combined were held responsible for 70% of the killings.
The Indonesian occupation of East Timor began in December 1975 and lasted until October 1999. After centuries of Portuguese colonial rule in East Timor, a 1974 coup in Portugal led to the decolonisation of its former colonies, creating instability in East Timor and leaving its future uncertain. After a small-scale civil war, the pro-independence Fretilin declared victory in the capital city of Dili and declared an independent East Timor on 28 November 1975.
East Timor or Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Maritime Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island surrounded by Indonesian West Timor. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea. The country's size is about 15,410 km2.
The Santa Cruz massacre was the shooting of at least 250 East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators in the Santa Cruz cemetery in the capital, Dili, on 12 November 1991, during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and is part of the East Timorese genocide.
Guido Valadares was a Timorese politician and independence activist. He was a member of FRETILIN National Committee and the Vice-Minister of Labor and Social Welfare of the FRETILIN government in 1975". In 2003, the national hospital of East Timor was renamed in his honor, Guido Valadares National Hospital.
Hamis Hatta was a Timorese politician and independence activist. He was a member of FRETILIN National Committee.
Alarico Fernandes is a Timorese politician and independence activist. He was a member of FRETILIN National Committee in the mid-1970s. Still a politician, he has served as Minister of Defence. Mari Alkatiri once stated of him that he "didn't have an ideology".
Jessie Stephen, MBE was a twentieth-century British suffragette, labour activist and local councillor. She grew up in Scotland and won a scholarship to train as a teacher. Family finances dictated otherwise, leading to her becoming a domestic worker at the age of 15. She became involved in national labour issues as a teenager, via organisations such as the Independent Labour Party and the Women's Social and Political Union. After moving to Lancashire and London she visited the United States and Canada, where she held meetings with the public including migrant English domestic workers.
The East Timor genocide refers to the "pacification campaigns" of state terrorism by the Indonesian government during the US-backed Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. University of Oxford held an academic consensus calling the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor a genocide and Yale university teaches it as part of its Genocide Studies program.
Ángela Freitas is an East Timorese politician, who is the leader of the Timorese Workers' Party and ran in the East Timorese presidential election, 2017.
Bella Galhos was an East Timorese independence activist during the period of Indonesian occupation of East Timor and has been a translator, presidential advisor, human rights activist and environmentalist since independence in 2002.
Isabel Barreto Lobato was an East Timorese politician, political activist, and member of Fretilin who was active in the movement for independence from Portugal. Barreto Lobato was a leading member of the Fretilin Women's Association at the time of East Timor's declaration of independence in November 1975. She was the wife of East Timor's first prime minister, Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, who held the office for nine days before the Indonesian invasion and occupation.
