East Timor — map and facts

About Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, is a small island nation in Southeast Asia with a population of approximately 1.3 million people. Its capital and largest city is Dili, located on the northern coast. The country became one of the world's newest nations when it restored independence on 20 May 2002 after centuries of Portuguese colonisation followed by a brutal Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999. Timor-Leste is a semi-presidential republic with a directly elected president and a prime minister heading the government. The country's economy relies heavily on oil and gas revenues from the Timor Sea, managed through the Petroleum Fund established in 2005, which serves as a sovereign wealth fund. Outside the petroleum sector, subsistence agriculture employs the majority of the population. Tetum and Portuguese are the official languages, with Indonesian and English serving as working languages. The population is predominantly Roman Catholic, a legacy of Portuguese colonisation. Timor-Leste is a member of the United Nations and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.

Geography and Landscape

Timor-Leste occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor, along with the Oecusse exclave on the island's northwestern coast and the small islands of Atauro and Jaco. The total land area is approximately 14,874 square kilometres. The island is dominated by a rugged central mountain range running east to west, with Tatamailau (Mount Ramelau) being the highest peak at 2,963 metres. The terrain is steep and heavily eroded, with narrow coastal plains on both the north and south coasts. The northern coast faces the Banda Sea, while the southern coast borders the Timor Sea, which contains the oil and gas fields vital to the national economy. The climate is tropical, characterised by a wet season from November to May and a dry season from May to November. The country is prone to earthquakes, landslides, and flooding. Rivers are generally short and seasonal. Coral reefs around Atauro Island and the northern coast support rich marine biodiversity and are considered among the most biodiverse reef systems in the world.

History

The island of Timor has been inhabited for at least 40,000 years. Portuguese traders arrived in the sixteenth century, and Portugal formally claimed the eastern half of Timor as a colony, with the boundary between Portuguese and Dutch Timor formalised in the 1913 Sentença Arbitral. Japan occupied the island from 1942 to 1945 during World War Two, during which an estimated 60,000 Timorese died. Portugal resumed control after the war, but a 1974 coup in Lisbon triggered a decolonisation process. Following a brief civil conflict, Fretilin declared independence in November 1975, but Indonesia invaded and annexed the territory just nine days later. The Indonesian occupation was marked by widespread violence and human rights abuses; estimates suggest up to 180,000 people died from conflict, famine, and disease between 1975 and 1999. A 1999 United Nations-supervised referendum resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence. A period of UN administration followed until formal independence was restored on 20 May 2002. Xanana Gusmão, the former resistance leader, served as the country's first president.