Day 50 - East Timor 🇹🇱
Has it really been 50 days since I started this project? I’m now at the point where writing has become far more natural, but it’s always a challenge to decide what to write about, and what to skip.
Anyway, onward to East Timor (or Timor-Leste). East Timor occupies half of the island of Timor and has been inhabited as early as 40,000 BC. It may seem pretty remarkable then that East Timor holds the record of being the first newly created sovereign state of the 21st Century. It also still holds the mantle of being Asia’s newest country.
How did this happen? I know this will shock you, but European colonialism may be a factor here. East Timor was a Portuguese colony known as Portuguese Timor from 1769 until 1975 when it gained independence. This newfound independence lasted for all of nine days before the Indonesian army saw the opportunity to storm and occupied the country. Ironically this occupation took place under the pretext of anti-colonialism.
Over the following 24 years were brutal and marked with brutality, violence and starvation. Eventually following pressure from the UN and Portugal an independence vote was held and passed. Despite gaining independence East Timor has still been relatively unstable with sporadic violent flare-ups.
It does look as though East Timor may finally be turning a corner though and finding its political feet. It’s experimenting with coalitions and small majority governments and there are signs it could be moving toward becoming a healthy democracy.
I’ve also found three other reasons to be positive about East Timor:
East Timor has a flourishing pride movement. The capital of Dili held it’s first pride parade in 2017 and since then it’s gone from strength-to-strength.
The most biodiverse waters in the world lie just off the East Timor island of Ataúro.
East Timor has one of the highest proportions of female politicians in the world. It’s already surpassed the 30% quota it embedded in its constitution. Currently, women account for 38% of East Timor’s parliamentarians. That certainly beats the likes of the UK (34%) and the US (26%).