East Timor votes for independence

September 7, 1999

East Timorese voters overwhelmingly chose independence from Indonesia in a UN-supervised referendum after twenty-four years of brutal occupation. Indonesian-backed militias responded with a rampage that killed over a thousand and destroyed most of the country's infrastructure in a scorched-earth campaign. An Australian-led peacekeeping force finally intervened. East Timor would become the twenty-first century's first new nation.