On May 20, 2002, the Timorese people achieved full independence and sovereignty after a hard and prolonged resistance and struggle for self-determination and affirmation of their cultural identity.
On November 28, 1975, a year after the April Revolution in Portugal, the Revolutionary Front for the independence of Timor-Leste (FRETILIN) proclaimed the independence of Timor-Leste.
However, with the support of the United States of America, Timor-Leste was illegally occupied by Indonesia on December 7, 1975. An occupation that continued for more than two decades, facing the indifference of many countries
The Portuguese language was prohibited and the Tetum language discouraged; censorship was established; the courageous and tenacious resistance and struggle conducted by FRETILIN against the occupier was brutally repressed.
The resistance and struggle of the Timorese people achieved greater international repercussion, including in Portugal, after the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery, in Dili, on November 12, 1991, when the Indonesian army fired on
demonstrators honouring a Timorese student murdered by Indonesian repression.
About a decade after the massacre at the Santa Cruz cemetery, the process that would culminate on May 20, 2002, went ahead.
The CPPC, which has been in solidarity since 1975 with the resistance and struggle of the Timorese people against the Indonesian occupier, expresses its sincere wishes to the Timorese people that the journey that began twenty years
ago, towards the sovereign development of their country, namely, in terms of economic, social and cultural progress, as well as peace, solidarity and cooperation with the peoples of the world, is pursued and effectively achieved.
Source: World Peace Council