East Timor Independence Day

East Timor Independence Day

May 20On 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.
CONTACTS:
East Timor Government, Department of Tourism
Apartado 194
Dili, Timor-Leste
670-331-0371; fax: 670-333-9179
www.turismotimorleste.com/en
Prime Minister's Office, Government Palace
President Nicolau Lobato Ave.
Dili, Timor-Leste
www.timor-leste.gov.tl