Marching bands filed through the streets. Construction workers hammered nails and set up speakers at an outdoor arena. Theater groups performed plays and poets staged readings.
East Timorese yesterday were preparing for an event many have waited, prayed and even died for during decades: Independence.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"We don't have to be scared anymore. We don't have to run," said Armanda Andrade, who had just come home with her seven children from a refugee camp.
Despair is giving way to hope and pride, yet independence raises many questions: How well can a devastated nation with a 400-year-old history of foreign domination run its own affairs? Will powerful Indonesian generals, angered over losing the territory, allow it to live in peace? Will settling old scores take precedence over nation-building?
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former US president Bill Clinton and Australian Prime Minister John Howard will be among the dignitaries attending the independence celebrations. Fireworks will go off at midnight tonight with the raising of the East Timorese flag, a white star on a background of red, yellow and black.
Then East Timor's first head of state will be sworn in. He is Xanana Gusmao, a 55-year-old poet and former guerrilla leader who spent more than six years in jail and under house arrest and was elected president in a UN-supervised vote.
The VIP likely to attract the most attention is Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, whose political career has been marked by outspoken opposition to East Timorese independence.
In an apparent attempt to deflect criticism from some hard-line Indonesian lawmakers, she will visit a cemetery containing the graves of some of the 3,000 Indonesian soldiers who the government in Jakarta says died during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor.
East Timor is a half-island with a population of 800,000, one speck of land in the 4,800km-long archipelago that is home to 200 million Indonesians. The nascent country is about 14,000km2 in size.
The relationship between the two countries will be a fragile one, with East Timor constantly watching for any sign that Indonesia's military is still supporting anti-independence militiamen who live in refugee camps on Indonesian West Timor.
Potential friction with Indonesia was underscored Friday when East Timor officials lodged a formal protest with Jakarta, complaining that Indonesia sent too many ships into East Timorese waters to provide security for Megawati's visit.
"We did not agree for Indonesia to bring in six warships. We had discussions with Indonesia and said we would allow one medical vessel to dock," Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta said.
"We are not angry, just puzzled with this ostentatious display of navy hardware that obviously is not a good public relations exercise for Indonesia in the eyes of the Timorese and major powers such as the US," Ramos-Horta added.
But East Timor will continue to have strong trade ties with the giant around it, and an embassy in the Indonesian capital.
Portugal ruled East Timor for more than 400 years until it abruptly withdrew in 1975. Indonesia, fearing a communist takeover in the ensuing chaos, invaded and annexed the territory. Its brutal occupation killed tens of thousands through starvation, forced migration and murder.
The UN has administered the territory since 1999, when a UN-sponsored referendum on independence resulted in a bloody rampage by pro-Jakarta militiamen who killed hundreds and destroyed most of the territory's infrastructure.
"Independence is a golden day for us," said Claudio de Jesus Lay, another refugee returning Friday from exile in West Timor. "So many people have been sacrificed."
De Jesus Lay is among 207,000 East Timorese refugees who have returned home since being driven from their homes in the 1999 rampage.
The number of returnees has swelled as independence approaches -- a sign of confidence in a land that has known much hardship and bloodshed.
Most East Timorese live on US$0.55 a day, according to the World Bank, and more than 40 percent are illiterate.
Unemployment is estimated at 70 percent, and the country will almost certainly be dependent on foreign aid for years.
It will face a talent vacuum when UN administrators depart. Its judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys are recent law school graduates.
Electricity functions only sporadically. East Timorese doctors number just over a dozen.
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