The island of Timor is approximately 800 km north-west of Darwin and about a fifth the size of Tasmania. Before the recent upheavals the population of East Timor was believed to be 800,000 - 78 percent Timorese, 2 percent Chinese and 20 percent Indonesian.
There are more than a dozen different ethnic groups on the island with their own languages and culture - the main group is Tetum.
In the 1500s Europeans established colonies in East Timor. The Portuguese and the Dutch were the main colonial powers. They established trade, mostly in sandalwood and coffee, took slaves, fought over territory and introduced European building, customs and religion. Portugal claimed East Timor in 1520 and the Dutch claimed West Timor in the 1640s. 92 percent of the population of East Timor is catholic, reflecting Christian missionary activity during their long period as a colony of Portugal.
After WW2, the Dutch were forced out of West Timor which in 1949 became part of Indonesia. After having generally neglected the colony during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Portuguese abandoned East Timor in 1974. This led to civil war between rival local parties over who was to control the newly declared independent nation.
In September 1975 Indonesian troops began to cross the border into East Timor. Five journalists, two Australian, two British and one New Zealand, who reported on that infiltration were murdered by the Indonesians at Balibo. The Australian Government did not intervene.
In 1976 Indonesian President Suharto, proclaimed East Timor as the 27th province of Indonesia. The Australian Government was one of the very few to accept the legitimacy of the claim.
After the Dili Massacre in 1991, Australia signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia, guaranteeing that the countries would develop and share the rich oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea.
In 1993 the United Nations Human Rights Commission made the first of two reports criticising Indonesian abuses of human rights in East Timor
In 1996 the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to Jose Ramos Horta (a political activist, exiled for two decades during which he lobbied for world recognition of East Timor) and Bishop Carlos Belo (head of the Catholic church in East Timor) for their efforts to gain freedom and independence for East Timor. Horta is likely to be a key political leader in the new East Timor.