Languages: Tetum, Portuguese (official); Bahasa Indonesia,
English; other indigenous languages, including Tetum, Galole, Mambae,
and Kemak
Ethnicity/race: Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian), Papuan, small
Chinese minority
Religions: Roman Catholic 98%, Muslim 1%, Protestant 1%
(2005).
Literacy rate: 58.6%
(2002)
Economic summary:GDP/PPP
(2007 est.): $2.215 billion; per capita $2,000. Real growth
rate: 24%. Inflation: 5.4%. Unemployment: 50%
estimated; note—unemployment in urban areas reached 20%; data do not
include underemployed (2001 est.). Arable land: 8.2%.
Agriculture: coffee, rice, corn, cassava, sweet potatoes,
soybeans, cabbage, mangoes, bananas, vanilla. Labor force: n.a.
Industries: printing, soap manufacturing, handicrafts, woven
cloth. Natural resources: gold, petroleum, natural gas,
manganese, marble. Exports: $10 million; note—excludes oil
(2005 est.): coffee, sandalwood, marble; note—potential for oil and
vanilla exports. Imports: $202 million (2004 est.): food,
gasoline, kerosene, machinery. Major trading partner: Indonesia
(2004).
Communications: Telephones:
main lines in use: 2,500 (2006); mobile cellular: 49,100 (2006).
Radio broadcast stations: at least 21 (Timor-Leste has one
national public broadcaster and 20 community and church radio stations
- frequency type n.a.) Television broadcast stations: 1
Internet hosts: 94 (2007) Internet users: 1000
(2004)
Transportation: Railways: total:
0 km. Highways: total: 6,040 km; paved: 2,600 km; unpaved:
3,440 km (2005). Waterways: n.a. Ports and harbors: n.a.
Airports: 8 (2007).
International
disputes: UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) has
maintained about a thousand peacekeepers in East Timor since 2002;
East Timor-Indonesia Boundary Committee continues to meet, survey, and
delimit the land boundary, but several sections of the boundary
especially around the Oekussi enclave remain unresolved; Indonesia and
East Timor contest the sovereignty of the uninhabited coral island of
Palau Batek/Fatu Sinai, which prevents delimitation of the northern
maritime boundaries; many of 28,000 East Timorese refugees still
residing in Indonesia in 2003 have returned, but many continue to
refuse repatriation; East Timor and Australia continue to meet but
disagree over how to delimit a permanent maritime boundary and share
unexploited potential petroleum resources that fall outside the Joint
Petroleum Development Area covered by the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty;
dispute with Australia also hampers creation of a southern maritime
boundary with Indonesia.
East Timor is located in the eastern part of Timor, an island in the
Indonesian archipelago that lies between the South China Sea and the
Indian Ocean. East Timor includes the enclave of Oecussi, which is located
within West Timor (Indonesia). After Indonesia, East Timor's closest
neighbor is Australia, 400 mi to the south. It is semiarid and
mountainous.
Government
Republic.
History
Timor was first colonized by the Portuguese in 1520. The Dutch, who
claimed many of the surrounding islands, took control of the western
portion of the island in 1613. Portugal and the Netherlands fought over
the island until an 1860 treaty divided Timor, granting Portugal the
eastern half of the island as well as the western enclave of Oecussi (the
first Portuguese settlement on the island). Australia and Japan fought
each other on the island during World War II; nearly 50,000 East Timorese
died during the subsequent Japanese occupation.
In 1949, the Netherlands gave up its colonies in the Dutch East Indies,
including West Timor, and the nation of Indonesia was born. East Timor
remained under Portuguese control until 1975, when the Portuguese abruptly
pulled out after 455 years of colonization. The sudden Portuguese
withdrawal left the island vulnerable. On July 16, 1976, nine days after
the Democratic Republic of East Timor was declared an independent nation,
Indonesia invaded and annexed it. Although no country except Australia
officially recognized the annexation, Indonesia's invasion was sanctioned
by the United States and other western countries, who had cultivated
Indonesia as a trading partner and cold-war ally (Fretilin, the East
Timorese political party spearheading independence, was Marxist at the
time).
Indonesia's invasion and its brutal occupation of East Timor—small,
remote, and desperately poor—largely escaped international attention. East
Timor's resistance movement was violently suppressed by Indonesian
military forces, and more than 200,000 Timorese were reported to have died
from famine, disease, and fighting since the annexation. Indonesia's human
rights abuses finally began receiving international notice in the 1990s,
and in 1996 two East Timorese activists, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
and José Ramos-Horta, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to
gain freedom peacefully.
After Indonesia's hard-line president Suharto left office in 1998, his
successor, B. J. Habibie, unexpectedly announced his willingness to hold a
referendum on East Timorese independence, reversing 25 years of Indonesian
intransigence. As the referendum on self-rule drew closer, fighting
between separatist guerrillas and pro-Indonesian paramilitary forces in
East Timor intensified. The UN-sponsored referendum had to be rescheduled
twice because of violence. On Aug. 30, 1999, 78.5% of the population voted
to secede from Indonesia. But in the days following the referendum,
pro-Indonesian militias and Indonesian soldiers retaliated by razing
towns, slaughtering civilians, and forcing a third of the population out
of the province. After enormous international pressure, Indonesia finally
agreed to allow UN forces into East Timor on Sept. 12. Led by Australia,
an international peacekeeping force began restoring order to the ravaged
region.
The UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) then governed the
territory for nearly three years. On May 20, 2002, nationhood was
declared. Charismatic rebel leader José Alexandre Gusmão, who was
imprisoned in Indonesia from 1992 to 1999, was overwhelmingly elected the
nation's first president on April 14, 2002. The president has a largely
symbolic role; real power rests with the parliament and Prime Minister
Mari Alkatiri, also a former guerrilla leader.
The first new country of the millennium, East Timor is also one of the
world's poorest. Its meager infrastructure was destroyed by the Indonesian
militias in 1999, and the economy, primarily made up of subsistence
farming and fishing, is in shambles. East Timor's offshore gas and oil
reserves promised the only real hope for lifting it out of poverty, but a
dispute with Australia over the rights to the oil reserves in the East
Timor Sea thwarted those efforts. The oil and gas fields lie much closer
to East Timor than to Australia, but a 1989 deal between Indonesia and
Australia set the maritime boundary along Australia's continental shelf,
which gives it control of 85% of the sea and most of the oil. Under these
terms, Australia was to receive 82% of the oil revenues and East Timor
just 18%. Finally, after years of wrangling, the two countries agreed in
May 2005 to defer the redrawing of the border for 50 years and to split
the oil and gas revenues down the middle.
East Timor's capital, Dili, descended into chaos in April and May 2006,
when the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, fired almost half the country's
soldiers for striking. The fired soldiers, who had protested against low
wages and alleged discrimination, then began rioting, and soldiers loyal
to the prime minister started battling them. Soon the violence had spread
to the police force and the civilian population, causing about 130,000 to
flee their homes to avoid the bloodshed. Australian troops were called in
to control the unrest. On June 26, Prime Minister Alkatiri resigned in an
effort to stop the country's disintegration. Alkatiri has been criticized
for doing little to stem East Timor's grinding poverty and social
problems, but the former independence fighter has remained immensely
popular. In July Alkatiri was replaced by José Ramos-Horta, winner of the
1996 Nobel Peace Prize.
In April 2007 presidential elections—the first since the country gained
independence—none of the candidates won a majority, necessitating a runoff
election. Francisco Guterres took 28.8% of the vote, Prime Minister
Ramos-Horta garnered 22.6%, and Fernando de Araujo won 19%. Ramos-Horta
prevailed in the second round of voting, taking 69% to Guterres's 31%.
Estanislau da Silva took over as interim prime minister, replacing
Ramos-Horta, who held the post since 2006. In August, President
Ramos-Horta named independence activist Xanana Gusmão as prime minister.
The move sparked violent protests led by supporters of the Fretilin party,
the former governing party. Fretilin won the most seats in elections, but
Gusmão formed a majority coalition, called the Alliance of the
Parliamentary Majority (AMP).
President Ramos-Horta survived an assassination attempt in February
2008. He was shot in the back and stomach in a gun battle outside his home
between his guards and supporters of renegade general Alfredo Reinado, who
was killed in the altercation. Reinado and several other generals were
fired in 2006 after lodging complaints of discrimination. Their case
became a rallying cry against the government and sparked a wave of
protests. Shortly after the shooting, Prime Minister Gusmão's motorcade
was attacked by the same rebel group, suggesting a coup attempt. He was
not injured in the ambush.
