Timor-Leste is the youngest country in Asia, located on Timor Island, the easternmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago, and only became independent of Indonesia in 2002, becoming the only Asian country in the entire Indonesian archipelago except Indonesia itself.
The independence of East Timor effectively undermined the political "integrity" of the Indonesian archipelago. Moreover, the country's population is only 1.32 million, and its land area is 15,000 square kilometers, which is less than one percent of Indonesia's.
As a result, Indonesia has long opposed east Timor's independence and was incorporated into Indonesia's territory after the establishment of the state of East Timor in 1975. However, through perseverance, East Timor eventually won its independence.
East Timor is located at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, close to Australia
Interestingly, the independence of East Timor not only "splits" Timor Island in two, but also a small enclave of East Timor in the western half of Indonesia, namely the Okusi district.
The area of Oecussi is only 2460 square kilometers, surrounded by Indonesia on one side and on three sides, and more than 100 kilometers away from the main body of East Timor, with basically no defense capabilities.
If so, why was Timor-Leste able to retain this enclave?
▲ Oecussi is surrounded by Indonesia on three sides, one facing the sea, and there is no land connection with the main body of East Timor
1. Ten Thousand Islands and All Nations
With 17,508 islands, Indonesia is known as the "Land of Ten Thousand Islands" and is the largest country in Southeast Asia, with a land area of 1.91 million square kilometers and a population of 260 million, of which Muslims account for 87%, making it the largest Islamic country in the world.
Before the 16th century, the Indonesian archipelago was just an archipelago and had never been unified. The scattered islands are inhabited by hundreds of peoples with uneven levels of development and different languages, but they all belong to the Austronesian language family in general.
The Indonesian archipelago has hundreds of ethnic groups that have not been integrated until modern times
Some of the large islands at the western end of the archipelago, such as Java, Sumatra, etc., saw the emergence of Buddhist regimes around the 7th century. At the same time, with the rise of Arab civilization, Arab merchants and immigrants spread Islam to the Indonesian archipelago and gradually came to dominate.
Due to the isolation of the sea, the Indonesian archipelago, especially the western islands, split into numerous Islamic sultanates. The eastern part of the archipelago is generally small, sparsely populated, and far from shipping routes to China and Arabia, so development in all aspects is very slow, like many parts of Timor Island, which until the 16th century still lived a primitive life of slash-and-burn farming.
Some of The inland indigenous peoples of East Timor still live slash-and-burn lives
The ancient Indonesian regime, with Java and Sumatra as the core, although its nominal territory included most of the archipelago, in fact it rarely paid attention to the many islands at the eastern end of the archipelago, and Neither Buddhism nor Islam could radiate there.
The first to break this closure were the Portuguese, who, as pioneers of the Great Navigation Movement, occupied Malacca in 1511, representing the beginning of European colonists' entry into East Asia.
Due to their relative weakness, the Portuguese mostly seized wealth from various parts of Asia through trade, trying to avoid direct confrontation with powerful local regimes.
The Portuguese colonial empire once encompassed half the world's seas
After discovering that the Indonesian archipelago was rich in a variety of spices that were urgently needed in Europe, the Portuguese explored the entire archipelago. Due to its large area (30,800 square kilometers), extremely rich in spice resources, and its ability to serve as a transit point on the Pacific route, Timor Island was chosen by the Portuguese as one of the main trading strongholds.
The indigenous people of Timor island are in a primitive social form, with no writing and no ability to resist. In 1556, the Portuguese first landed on the island of Sion, built ports, cities and churches, and spread Catholicism to the natives. They called the landing site "Oecussi" and could be said to be the birthplace of the modern East Timorese state.
The Portuguese also used Timor Island as a base to expand to the surrounding areas, establishing a large colonial network that overwhelmed the Indonesian archipelago, and made excess profits from it.
Second, the colonists take turns
The Portuguese monopolized Timor Island for a short time, after the rise of the "sea coachman" Dutch, along the Portuguese route invaded East Asia, all the way to seize Sri Lanka, Malacca and other places of Portuguese colonial strongholds, and then into the Indonesian archipelago, in 1605 occupied Ambon Island, in 1618, and landed in the western part of Timor Island, constantly squeezing the Portuguese territory.
Oecussi was defenseless and defensible, and the Portuguese had to relocate their colonial institutions to the mountains east of Timor, rebuilding the city and religious center in Dili, creating a situation of Dutch-Portuguese confrontation between the east and the west on the island.
Despite no land connection, Oecussi remained predominantly Portuguese, and the Catholic Church continued to function, even after it was occupied by the Dutch in 1618.
▲ Although Portugal is weak in national strength, it is good at dancing with long sleeves and has retained many overseas colonies
In the 17th century, the sea overlords were the Dutch, and in the 18th century, they were replaced by the British, who fought against Dutch colonial power on a global scale.
Faced with increasingly fierce colonial rivalries, Portugal began to tighten its grip on several overseas colonies, formally establishing the Portuguese East Timorese colonial authorities in 1702, with the Governor's Office in Dili and Oecussi occupied by the Dutch.
Relatively speaking, Timor Island is far from the Asian continent, the strategic position is not very high, the British once occupied the Dutch West Timor, and when the British and Dutch reached a compromise, the British returned the area to the Netherlands in 1816, in exchange for the Dutch to give up other Asian colonies other than the Indonesian archipelago.
The vast majority of East Timorese are devout Catholics
In the more than 300 years from the 17th to the 19th century, the Dutch completed the conquest of almost the entire Indonesian archipelago, forcing the sultanates to recognize their suzerainty, realizing the unification of the Indonesian archipelago for the first time in history, and objectively shaping the "country of ten thousand islands" of modern Indonesia.
▲ Dutch East Indies
Although the Portuguese had long since withdrawn from the competition for Asian colonies, they took advantage of the contradictions between Britain and the Netherlands and other great powers to preserve the fruits of Goa, Macao, and East Timor. Although Timor-Leste is the most remote, in addition to the huge profits it can bring, the considerable number of immigrants is also the main reason why Portugal has tried its best to keep it.
▲ The Indonesian colony is of great significance to the Netherlands, known as the "Queen's Pearl Necklace"
In 1856, Portugal signed a treaty with the Netherlands to clarify the division of Timor Island, and the main inhabitant of Oecussi was the Catholic Portuguese, which was the original colony of the Portuguese here, so it was returned to Portuguese East Timor as an enclave within dutch territory. The eastern part of Timor Island, centered on Dili, together with Oecussi, was the precursor to the modern East Timorese state.
In the face of a large number of indigenous people and the powerful Islam, the Dutch did not deliberately promote Dutch and Protestantism, but only focused on the collection of wealth, which made their relations with the indigenous people very tense. After a long period of exchange and integration, the local indigenous people began to form the Indonesian nation.
▲ Dutch rule over Indonesia was based entirely on force
The Portuguese, weak in strength, paid more attention to easing relations with the natives and spread Catholicism on a large scale.
The local indigenous people, who were not influenced by early Buddhism and Islam, smoothly switched from primitive faith to Catholicism, and their language was increasingly mixed into the Portuguese vocabulary, which was different from other indigenous peoples, and the small island of Timor eventually formed a distinct religious and linguistic differentiation.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the Dutch, Portuguese and other colonial authorities increasingly cultivated and used indigenous elites to manage the colonies, and these indigenous students who were educated in the West were the first to awaken their national consciousness and would become leaders of national independence in the future.
▲ The Portuguese colonists needed to use the power of the indigenous people to maintain colonial rule
With the rise of the social status of the indigenous people, Portuguese East Timor created the Detun language and script on the basis of the Portuguese alphabet, becoming the lingua franca of the local indigenous people, second only to the official Portuguese language. Due to the influence of Portuguese, The Dieton language has become quite different from other indigenous Indonesian languages.
The division of Timor Island into two has left the indigenous people of Timor-Leste in a relatively closed state for a long time, although they share a common ancestor with the indigenous peoples of Dutch Indonesia and have similar languages, but there is little communication between the two, which is absent from the process of integration of the Indonesian nation, but forms the self-identity of the East Timorese nation.
The Japanese fascists did confuse some Asians who were deeply oppressed by colonial oppression at the beginning
When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, Both Dutch Indonesia and Portuguese East Timor were occupied by Japanese fascists.
In order to eliminate the European colonial forces, the Japanese fascists claimed to help the Asian nation to awaken and become independent, but in fact they used anti-colonial forces everywhere, such as Suharto of Dutch Indonesia, to objectively accelerate the disintegration of the Asian colonial system.
After World War II, the Dutch and Portuguese returned with the remnants of the victorious powers, but the colonialism they wanted to restore was about to be eliminated by the tide of the times. Colonized by Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and Japan, East Timor had a particularly strong desire for national independence.
3. Ten thousand islands and one country
After more than four years of brutal fighting, Dutch Indonesia won national independence in 1950, and the western part of Timor Island became Indonesia's West Timor Province. The newly independent Indonesia, while ostensibly acknowledging that East Timor and the enclave of Oecussi belong to Portugal, has its own ideas in its heart.
▲ The countries involved in Great Indonesianism
The Indonesian independence movement was accompanied by Greater Indonesianism from the beginning, and Indonesia believed that the indigenous people of the entire Indonesian archipelago, although of different beliefs, should belong to the same people and speak the same language. He wanted to build a large Indonesian country, including Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.
Indonesia's struggle for independence was brutal, giving rise to a powerful army
These three countries and the international community strongly opposed Greater Indonesianism, and Indonesia did not hesitate to use force to this end, and also withdrew from the United Nations in 1965. Instead, Indonesia was isolated internationally and had to return to the United Nations in 1975.
Greater Indonesianism has been battered, and the only hope left is East Timor. This is a small, remote country surrounded by Indonesia, with no important strategic position and resources, and no big country support behind it, and it seems that it should be able to succeed.
Sukarno is one of the central figures of Great Indonesianism
At the same time as the rise and fall of Greater Indonesianism, the relatively moderate rule of the Portuguese coupled with the religious role made the struggle for independence in East Timor less intense than that of Indonesia.
Even so, Portuguese Prime Minister Salazar, who wielded power, felt a crisis and in 1951 converted the Colony of East Timor into an overseas province in an attempt to exchange nominal national treatment for the allegiance of the East Timorese people.
In the 1950s, Britain and France and other colonial powers successively renounced colonialism, and national liberation and independence have become the consensus of the international community. Portugal, on the other hand, was more dependent on blood transfusions from the colonies and was reluctant to adapt to the tide of the times, and the independence forces of East Timor were forced to seek help from Indonesia, and some people within it recognized "Great Indonesianism".
Indonesia sent 30,000 troops to invade East Timor, which had only 2,000 troops
With the rise of anti-colonial movements in the world, the United Nations adopted a resolution in 1960 declaring East Timor and its dependent territories "Non-Self-Governing Territories" under Portuguese administration.
This resolution in fact negates Portugal's attempt to continue to occupy East Timor and provides the legal basis for East Timor's independence.
From 1960 to 1974, armed uprisings broke out in Portugal's African colonies of Angola and Mozambique, which triggered anti-dictatorship and anti-colonial movements in Portugal. The newly formed Portuguese Government announced in 1975 that it would allow East Timor to hold a referendum and introduce national self-determination.
The mountainous terrain of East Timor contributes to resistance activities
There are three political forces within East Timor that advocate independence, annexation to Indonesia, and maintenance of relations with Portugal. The contradictions between the three factions soon turned into a civil war, and the "Revolutionary Front for the Independence of Timor" advocated independence, retaining the Tetun language and the Catholic faith, and thus gained the most support and prevailed.
On 28 November 1975, the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of Timor (FNI) announced its independence from the Portuguese colonial authorities and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.
At this time, Indonesia finally revealed its true intentions to support East Timor's liberation from colonial rule, and invaded East Timor in an all-round way on December 7, nine days after its independence.
In July 1976, Indonesia declared East Timor the province of East Timor, and the Indonesian archipelago became a country. But the United Nations and the international community have never recognized Indonesia's annexation of East Timor.
4. Restoration of independence
After East Timor was annexed by Indonesia, Oecussi became a provincial enclave from an interstate enclave, and its transfer to the province of West Timor became an internal affair of Indonesia. However, Indonesia has been slow to take this step and retains the enclave.
The most important reason is that Oecussi and East Timor as a whole have been relentlessly resisting Indonesian military occupation. Indonesia's desire to abolish the Tetun language and change the local Catholic Church with Islam provoked a revolt by almost the entire East Timorese people.
East Timorese living in Australia appeal to the attention of the international community
East Timorese resistance forces fought guerrilla warfare in vast mountainous areas, and the Indonesian army was able to maintain its occupation of the cities. Despite the overwhelming superiority of the Indonesian army in numbers and weapons, it has never been able to eliminate the resistance and thus absorb and integrate East Timor.
Because of this, Indonesia is reluctant to further intensify the resistance of East Timor and can only retain the enclave of Oecussi. Because Oecussi, as the earliest landing place of Portuguese colonists and the earliest center of Catholicism, has great spiritual and religious significance for East Timor.
▲ All elections in Timor-Leste under the supervision of the United Nations
Even if it was only to appease the people of East Timor, Oecussi could not be divided. Moreover, Oecussi is a Catholic region that is at odds with the surrounding Islamic province of West Timor and is inconvenient to administer.
East Timor's sense of independence is very strong, and it has not weakened after more than 20 years of struggle. In addition, Indonesia's expansionist behavior has aroused the alarm of neighboring countries, and Australia, which is across the sea from East Timor, and many countries have supported the struggle for east Timor's independence and have repeatedly appealed on various international occasions.
The United Nations has long been stationed in Timor-Leste as a peacekeeping force and police
In 1999, under strong pressure at home and abroad, Indonesia finally agreed to hold a referendum in East Timor to determine its own destiny. On 30 August, under the supervision of the United Nations, 78.5 per cent of East Timorese citizens voted in favour of independence.
The United Nations immediately contributed peacekeeping troops and established the Transitional Administration. On 20 May 2002, East Timor declared its independence, the capital dili, and the official languages are Tetun and Portuguese, which are unique to East Timor.
On 27 September of that year, Timor-Leste joined the United Nations and was officially recognized by the international community as the youngest country in Asia. For the people of East Timor, this is simply a restoration of the independence declared in 1975.
Fifth, enclaves are difficult to fly
Based on that sad history, Timor-Leste has always been wary of Indonesia, but Indonesia is its only neighbor, with a population and area more than a hundred times larger, so Timor-Leste must maintain normal diplomatic and economic and trade relations with Indonesia in order to win better development space.
As a result of decades of war, Timor-Leste's economic situation is very weak, with only some traditional agriculture, listed as one of the world's least developed countries. In April 2006, the change of Government in Timor-Leste led to massive unrest, which was put to rest with the strong involvement of the international community, led by Australia.
▲ Relief food for the international community to assist Timor-Leste
In recent years, with the discovery of a large number of oil and gas resources in the surrounding waters, as well as the expansion of diplomatic relations in various aspects, the relationship with Indonesia has gradually improved, and the economy of Timor-Leste has gradually improved, and the oil and gas revenue has greatly exceeded that of agriculture as the pillar of the traditional economy, but the foundation is too thin, and the per capita GDP in 2019 is only 1238 US dollars, less than one-third of Indonesia (about 4000 US dollars).
The Oecussi enclave naturally became a district of East Timor, equivalent to a "province", as East Timor seceded from Indonesia. Today, the population is 57,000, accounting for 4.3% of the country's total population of 1.32 million. 91.4 per cent of East Timorese are Catholics, with an even higher proportion of Catholics in Oecussi.
▲Due to the inconvenience of land transportation, Timor-Leste has 7 airports, the largest of which is Dili Airport
Timor-Leste's transportation is relatively backward, there is no railway in the whole territory, the road is not very developed, the enclave of Oecussi has a small airport, the slightly larger Dili airport can only take off and land regional passenger aircraft, and foreigners need to transfer from Indonesia or Australia to enter East Timor.
The area of Oecussi enclave is only 2460 square kilometers, more than 100 kilometers away from the main body of East Timor, because of the indonesian province of West Timor and land transportation is not very convenient, need to go through the procedures for going abroad, fortunately, the two countries have reached an agreement, can be directly accessed by sea or air, without any formalities.