Background
East Timor owes its territorial distinctiveness from the rest of Timor, and the Indonesian archipelago as a whole, to the fact that it was colonized by the Portuguese, not the Dutch (an agreement dividing the island between the two powers was signed in 1915). Colonial rule was replaced by the Japanese during World War II, whose occupation spawned a resistance movement that resulted in the deaths of 60,000 Timorese, or 13 percent of the entire population at the time. Following the war, the Dutch East Indies secured its independence as the independent Republic of Indonesia and the Portuguese, meanwhile, re-established control over East Timor. When East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in December 1975, "it had few prior links to the rest of the archipelago. As a former Portuguese colony, it lacked a shared colonial experience with other regions."
Read more about this topic: Indonesian Invasion Of East Timor
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