The story of Timor-Leste is one that is close to my heart. A former Portuguese colony, it declared independence in November 1975, only to be invaded by Suharto's Indonesia less than two weeks later. The subsequent occupation was brutal, to put it mildly. The population of East Timor in 1975 was estimated to be 688,000 people; an estimated 150,000 lost their lives in the years that would follow due to direct violent killings, conflict-induced famine, and so forth. Imprisonment, torture, rape etc was rampant. All during this time, successive Australian governments considered the occupation fait accompli. But the Timorese and their allies for self-determination across the world did not give up, and in 1999 the population overwhelmingly indicated their support for independence and voted overwhelmingly (78.5%) against "autonomy" within Indonesia.
The results led to mass violence by pro-Indonesian militia. As the government dragged its feet, Australians protested and eventually - through a rather concerted mass effort where unions were once again at the forefront - the Australian government reluctantly led a UN military mission, INTERFET to ensure peace (an excellent book on how this occurred is by Clinton Fernandes, "Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia, and the Liberation of East Timor". INTERFET would be converted into UNTAET, the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor, which prepared the country for independence.
For my own part in was in late 1990s, prior to the independence referendum, that Timor became an area of activism for me when I worked as an electorate officer for the Victorian Parliament. In 2002 I visited the country for the first time as the only nominee of the Australian political party appointed as an observer to the UNTAET-run Presidential elections. Whilst I was there I met with representatives of their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later in the year I would find myself working as a volunteer for said ministry as the "Information and Communications Technology Policy Advisor" for a year. It is fair to say I worked pretty hard during that year on policy documents, training manuals (translated by the United Nations Development Programme), general network and system maintenance, and even building the first government website. When I left, the Minister (and Nobel Peace Prize recipient) Jose Ramos-Horta provided a rather positive summary of my work. The Australian government's behaviour toward the new country, as Juice Media has pointed out, has not exactly been good.