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Elizabete Lim Gomes:
This is the edited version East Timor colonised, abandoned, invaded, beaten, betrayed but never was conquered (A personal account of dispossession and recovery)

The spirit of the warrior king, Liurai Dom Boaventura, has ultimately shed the shackles that burdened his walk to freedom. We, the East Timorese have finally repossessed the ownership of our land - a goal pursued by our ancestors since the first Portuguese tall ship arrived in the shores of the island of Timor in the 1500s.

More than 400 years of Portuguese colonialism plus 24 years of a brutal Indonesian occupation could not destroy the deep-rooted spirit of independence of the East Timorese. Despite nearly five centuries of foreign domination we had never doubted that one day we would walk free on our land. We began as an island of brave warriors, proud kings and a people who enjoyed a rich cultural existence and a vibrant trade with the various parts of the world. We had been successful in defending and protecting our land against numerous other invaders who tried to take control of our island's natural resources. And, in the bleakest periods of our existence, our cultural custodians read signs in our indigenous Lulik rituals that confirmed our fundamental right to rule in our land. They saw the confirmation in the blood of the sacrificed roosters, in the lines formed in the spittle of the chewed beetle nuts and in the tracks swords cut through the smoke of bonfires.

Word of the confirmation was spread to the people and to the invaders, and because of their farsightedness, our cultural custodians were first ridiculed by the Portuguese rulers, and later silenced by the Indonesian invaders. But despite such adversary our vision was maintained alive by our warrior kings who, supported by the people, rebelled against the Portuguese and maintained our culture intact and most of our land free from Portuguese domination for over three hundred years.

Our stronghold on the vision for independence and respect for our land worked as a subliminal force that kept the Portuguese authority away from the indigenous way of life. Only after four centuries of superior European firepower, strategic religious conversions and vigorous political manipulation did the Portuguese manage to tear holes in the strong web of East Timorese resistance and achieve firm control over most of the Eastern part of the island. This led to a period of a semi-melancholic existence in the 1900s for many East Timorese who, numbed by material possessions and phony social status administrated by the colonial power, tolerated the Portuguese fascist regime of the time along with their sense of superiority and outward racism. But that is not to say there were no shows of discontent.

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