Beneath Soeharto's statue, cobbled areas of worship in front of a chapel are empty, except for 12 black-clad Indonesian soldiers practising martial arts. They stare coldly at our driver, a former anti-Indonesian guerilla who had his hair burnt off during a torture session after his capture. Fast forward into the new millennium. Qantas flights make their first Asian stop on the tiny tourist enclave of independent East Timor, just a few minutes by air from the Australian coast. Lobster and fine Portuguese wine are half the price of that in Sydney and Melbourne.
Luxury resorts dot the unspoilt beaches.
You can taste some of the best coffee or wander through restored mansions built during Portugal's 450 years of benign neglect until it abandoned the Timorese to their fate in 1975. Despite an endless cycle of increasing violence among independence supporters and other Timorese wanting to remain part of Indonesia, the rapid collapse of the territory's basic infrastructure, especially health and education, and the mass evacuation of key Indonesian traders and civil servants, East Timor is no longer a place of pervasive fear. It is almost certainly more dangerous than at any time in the past decade, especially for non-Timorese, mostly Muslim migrants, thousands of whom are fleeing ahead of what they believe will be a violent backlash against the ruthlessness of the Indonesian military over decades. But the psychological climate has changed. Timorese no longer feel frightened to say what they think.