On May 20, 2002, about half of a small island in the Lesser Sundra group became the
Democratic Republic of East Timor after being an unwilling and brutalized province of
Indonesia for the previous two decades and under Portuguese colonial rule for hundreds of
years before that.

Among the approximately 200,000 attendees at the independence ceremony in the capital
city of Dili were Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, who won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1996 for their efforts toward building the peaceful independence of this Roman Catholic
region within Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.

Full story: https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/East+Timor+Independence+Day

Mike Dippel

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