Towards Independence

To fully understand the significance of the guerilla war now being waged in East Timor, one must understand some of the development there in the last three years. For some 400 years East Timor (then known as Portugese Timor) was a sleepy outpost of the Portugese empire. It was rudely awakened in April 1974, when the Armed Forces Movement took control in Portugal. The coup in Lison brought some democratic reforms to the Timorese people for the first time, and with them came the hope that the colony might seek independence and govern itself like all other countries in the region. However, independence was not the only option open to the 650,000 people of East Timor, and in the months following the Lisbon coup, various political parties emerged each with a different political orientation.

The UDT party (Uniao Democratica Timorense) was essentially a union to protect the status quo, and its founders included Timorese who had benefitted from Portugese rule. The UDT initially envisaged Timor as part of a federation of Portugese-speaking states with strong cultural and trading links with Portugal.

The Fretilin party (Revolutionary Front for Independent East Timor) aimed to be a broad front representing all pro-independence forces in East Timor, and did not identify itself with any particular philosophy such as social democracy.

Apodeti (Associacao Popular Democratica Timorense), a party formed about a month after the Lisbon Coup, sought for East Timor "independence within Indonesia rather than on its own,"

Of these three main political parties which emerged, Fretilin soon commanded the most popular support, as it operated widely throughout East Timor at grassroots level. After one year of operation Fretilin had 200,000 registered members and many more supporters, largely as a result of its literacy and agricultural projects.

1975 proved an eventful year for politics in East Timor On January 21, UDT and Fretilin formed a coalition. Following events in Portugal and the Whitlam-Suharto talks of September 1974 (when Whitlam stated: "an independent Timor would be an uneviable state and a potential threat to the area,") UDT found itself moving towards a more clear-cut position on independence, while Fretilin recognised the importance of keeping the Portuegese in East Timor for some time to help carry out the process of decolonisation.

In June, a summit was held in Macau, ostensibly to work out a procedure for decolonisation, and elections were planned for October 1976. But it seems that almost none of the participants at the summit believed that elections would ever take place as various other things were being planned behind the scenes. In the early hours of August 11, UDT staged a "bloodless" coup in Dili, the capital of East Timor (a town about the size of Taihape.) However, because of popular support for Fretilin, the coup backfired, and by September 8, UDT had been forced into retreat and their main stronghold was Liquica, 25 km west of Dili.