Vannessa Hearman and Jose da Costa – In 1995, 18 East Timorese youths sailed illegally to Australia in a small fishing boat. After five nights at sea they reached Australian waters.

Emilia Terzon – From Cyclone Tracy to the Bali bombings, the small tropical city of Darwin has on a few rare, yet memorable occasions become an epicentre of a major international event.

Tom Allard – Australian diplomats in the Jakarta embassy mocked reports of the rape, torture and execution of East Timorese after the invasion of Indonesia, remarking that it "sounds like fun" and

Paul Rogers – Two decades on, an inspiring example of successful direct action against powerful states and the arms industry is recalled.

Dili (ANTI/Pacific Media Watch) – Human rights advocates have appealed to President Joko Widodo to "end impunity and consolidate democracy" on the eve of his first visit to Timor-Leste today.

In 1975, Indonesian forces invaded Timor-Leste, heralding an occupation that lasted 24 years and claimed the lives of up to a third of the population.

John Martinkus – As Indonesian troops fired on a compound of refugees in Dili, John Howard directed the AFP to withdraw.

Peter Job – In early October the Timor-Leste Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araujo announced that after two years of inconclusive talks his nation was initiating arbitration with Australia on jurisdic

Adam Harvey – The 40th anniversary of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor was marked yesterday with a small commemoration at the headquarters of the nation's Kopassus special forces.

Sue Lannin – A recently re-discovered document given to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta suggests Australia may have been aware of Indonesian plans to execute East Timorese independence leaders af

Sashka Koloff, staff – When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, they effectively sealed off the country to the outside world.

I have just visited Timor Leste, 16 years after my last visit. It was a study in contrasts.

Inacia Tamele huddled in the jungle to learn to read, became a campaigner for independence in East Timor, and returned to the jungle to hide when pro-Indonesian militias were hunting her.

Philip Dorling – The Australian and United States governments knew Indonesia was prepared to use napalm against the people of Timor Leste but made no protest, according to secret documents unearthe

Thea Cowie – The Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Canberra has ordered declassification of a number of documents which the federal government argues may inflame already tense relation

Rose Iser – Concerns about Australia's troubled relationship with Indonesia are behind the government's refusal to release secret 30-year-old documents about the war in East Timor.

Philip Dorling – Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has moved to block the release of secret archives that would reveal the Australian government's knowledge of Indonesian war crim

This movement was established by the university students who are concerned about the serious crimes committed by the Indonesian soldiers from 1975-1999.

Emelyn Rude – In 2007, despite mounting civil unrest, Timor-Leste established its first National Park connecting a number of endangered bird areas and encompassing a large section of th

Peter Lloyd: New light is being shed on Australia's preparedness to challenge Indonesia over its actions in East Timor after the invasion back in 1975.

James Bennett – Malcolm Fraser has acknowledged newly obtained diplomatic cables from the period after Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 suggest his government was warned of a loomin

Key Australian government officials sounded early warnings about the rapidly deteriorating situation in East Timor in the late 1970s that led to the starvation deaths of an estimated 10

Paul Toohey – Three months before Indonesia invaded East Timor in December 1975, Gough Whitlam dismissed an Indonesian proposal to send a joint international military force to restore p

Paul Toohey – Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was anxious to assure Jakarta that the matter of East Timor was closed as far as Australia was concerned, less than a year after Indonesia in

Police in East Timor who uncovered a mysterious mass grave at the national government palace last month said Friday they had found the bones of 72 bodies and clues the dead may have bee

Gerry Van Klinken – There is bitter irony here. Even for the winning side, this bloody outcome was not optimal.

Lindsay Murdoch – They were East Timor's stolen generation.

Hamish McDonald – As Australians recalled the Japanese bombing of Darwin 70 years ago yesterday, the leader of a small neighbouring country was reminding us gently that this was but a s

Australia's invasion of East Timor (yes, really) [1] in December 1941, is widely assumed to have been made in order to expel Japanese forces from the territory.

During Indonesia's 25-year occupation of East Timor, about 4-thousand children were transferred to Indonesia to live with adoptive parents.

Greg Ansley – Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke's new Labor Government abandoned the party's tough stand on the annexation of East Timor under threat of huge retaliation by Ind

Clinton Fernandes – In April 2007 I applied to the National Archives of Australia for access to records of the Defence Intelligence Organisation relating to Indonesia and East Timor in

Dylan Welch – The veil of secrecy obscuring what Australia knew about Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor will be pulled back a little, after a successful court challenge against th

Yemris Fointuna – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who led the 774/Satya Yudha Bakti (SYB) infantry battalion from 1986 to 1988, appeared moved when he briefed some 1,000 soldiers pa

Hamish McDonald – The minority government era of openness and co-operation has begun with strike one for secrecy against an attempt to open up 35-year-old defence intelligence informati

Secret Cabinet documents from 1979 released by the Australian National Archives on January 1 confirm high tension between Australia and Indonesia over East Timor, as famine spread in th

Linda Mottram – Secret cabinet documents from 1979 have confirmed the high tensions between Australia and Indonesia over East Timor, as the Fraser government balanced how best to give a

Jerome Rivet, Dili – From his terrifying footage of the 1991 massacre at Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery, British journalist and filmmaker Max Stahl has tracked every step of East Timor's tr

Eleanor Hall: In their country's quarter of a century long struggle for independence, around 10,000 East Timorese people were taken as political prisoners by Indonesia.

Former Indonesian president BJ Habibie says a letter from then-Australian prime minister John Howard pushed him into acting quickly on independence for East Timor.

John Lyons – John Howard braced himself for the possibility of up to 30 Australian soldiers being killed by the Indonesian military when he made his decision to send troops to intervene

Andra Jackson – Jill Jolliffe knows that often in wars it is the heroes who are remembered while the suffering of ordinary people goes unnoted.

Karen Michelmore, Ubud, Bali – Naldo Rei's thick, wavy hair trails down his back. He has worn it this way for much of his life, for protection, and as a symbol of resistance.

The village of Tai Tete is a 40-minute climb from the town of Maliana, in the west of East Timor.

Many ordinary people were celebrated as heroes for the role they played during East Timor's struggle for independence from Indonesia.

In East Timor a group claiming to represent 200 former resistance fighters is demanding financial recognition for its contribution to the country's independence struggle.

The West Papua National Coalition of Liberation says Indonesia can point to little in the way of progress in the Papua region since its occupation in 1963.

Patrick Walters – The Fraser government refused visas to prominent East Timorese left-wingers forced into exile after the Indonesian invasion of the former Portuguese colony in late 197

Russell Skelton, Canberra – The Fraser cabinet was warned by a powerful committee of defence chiefs that a prolonged war of independence by Fretilin rebels could lead to intervention by

Patrick Walters – Thirty years ago the Fraser government grappled with the consequences of the Indonesian takeover of East Timor.