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Hey, there's a new country in the world, as of 20/5/2002, and it's called East Timor. It's located in beautiful south south Asia, near Australia, it's been under colonial control for 450 years and as of midnight local time (3pm GMT?), it is no longer part of (a) Portugal (b) Indonesia or (c) a united nation administered area.
In the time between being taken over by Indonesia (apparently they did it because America said to) and independence, hundreds of thousands of East Timorese have died without their consent being given. Imagine that, imagine if they hadn't been re-occupied: their population would be over one million, and they would probably be pretty well off, because of tremendous oil reserves in the Timor Sea.
Yet, on all the coverage I saw last night, they all seemed to be pretty forgiving. When Indonesian Preident Megawati Sukarnoputri (sp?) went to her seat, escorted by incoming ET President Xanana Gusmao, they all cheered her.
I mean, that's pretty cool. What a choice country. But, doesn't that pt (a) your problems and (b) your responses to them into a new perspective? |
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