Let's Tour Timor-Leste Trivia Quiz

Answer: Off the southeast coast of mainland Asia

The red circle on the map shows Timor-Leste, which occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor. The name Timor is derived from the Malay word 'timur', meaning east, since the island is at the east end of the Malay archipelago. Its name therefore means 'East east'.

The island of Timor is part of the region referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia, which also includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Singapore. It is the largest and most easterly member of the Nusa Tengara (which translates to Southeast Islands) archipelago of volcanic islands. Timor-Leste is the only Asian nation to lie entirely in the southern hemisphere.

Answer: Mountains

Timor-Leste is quite mountainous. As a result, landslides are a serious threat, both during the rainy season (December to April) and following the earthquakes which are not infrequent events. The island is located on a chain of volcanic islands formed as the East Eurasian plates converge on the India and Australian plates. The subduction of the India and Australian plates along the Java Trench was responsible for the Boxing Day earthquake (26 December 2004) which produced a series of tsunamis that killed over 230,000 people.

The picture shows a statue of Christ on a hilltop near the national capital of Dili.

Answer: Portugal

The national motto of Timor-Leste is "Unidade, Acção, Progresso" (shown in Portuguese on the coat of arms), which translates into English as "Unity, Action, Progress". The Portuguese established settlements in Timor during the 17th century, and officially took control of the eastern part of the island in 1769 when Dili was founded, and the colony was named Portuguese Timor, the name it kept until independence from Portugal was declared on 28 November 1975. In 1859 the Portuguese officially ceded control of West Timor to the Netherlands; the boundary between the two regions was finally (at least, for the next century) fixed in 1916 by the Hague Treaty.

Tetum is an Austronesian language that developed as a contact language among the tribes of Timor. The Portuguese encouraged its continued use, rather than imposing Portuguese on the colony, because they kept quite a distant supervision over this far-flung outpost, relying on local rulers to maintain order, and allowing them quite a deal of freedom as long as they became official vassals of the king of Portugal.

Answer: Indonesia

The photo shows the border between Timor-Leste and the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tengarra, which includes West Timor. When Timor-Leste declared their independence in 1975, the Indonesian government was worried about the possibility that their neighbour's new government might be communist in nature.

Indonesia's subsequent invasion of Timor-Leste led to a much more violent struggle for independence than had been the case for the relatively smooth process of decolonization from Portuguese control.

In 1999 INTERFET, a peacekeeping force under Australian control, arrived to try to restore order; the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor took over in October of that year, and guided the process of establishing the independence of Timor-Leste, which was achieved in July of 2002.

Answer: Exclave

An exclave is a part of any country which is separated from geographical contact with the rest of the country by an intervening territory that belongs to another country. The district of Oecusse is the region where the Portuguese first settle Timor, when a group of Dominicans started missionary work there in 1566. The 1859 Treaty of Lisbon, which divided the island of Timor between the Dutch and the Portuguese, left this region in Portuguese hands, and it has remained a part of Timor-Leste since independence.

As well as this exclave, Timor-Leste includes a number of islands, including Atuaro (shown on the map, which indicates that it is part of the Dili district) and Jaco, an uninhabited island off the eastern tip of the island of Timor.

Answer: Parliamentary democracy and Democratic republic

A democracy (adjectival form democratic) is a government in which the people of the country participate, more or less directly, in the selection of political leaders and the development of laws. A republic is a governmental structure in which the head of state is not an inherited position; the head of state is often designated as a president.

A parliamentary system is one in which the leaders of the executive branch of the government get their authority from the legislative branch. Typically the head of government is called a prime minister. Technically Timor-Leste is a unitary parliamentary democracy, because the legislature is unicameral - there is only one body in the National Parliament, with no division into two houses with separate rights and duties (as is the case in the USA, with the Senate and the House of Representatives, and in the UK, with the House of Lords and the House of Commons).

Answer: Artefacts found there show human presence dates back at least 30,000 years

The largest cave on the island, called Lena Hara, was found by scientists in the 1960s. Exploration revealed fishhooks and beads made from shells that have been radiocarbon dated to around 30,000 years ago. This is considered evidence of a wave of migration in the area. Carved faces high up on the walls have been dated back 10,000 years, and there are also paintings that are thought to be between 2,000 and 6,000 years old.

Answer: Roman Catholicism

Along with the Philippines, Timor-Leste is a country where the majority of people practice the Roman Catholic faith, although local animistic traditions continue to have a strong influence on local culture and tradition. While religion has never been the basis of the conflict between the eastern and western halves of Timor, the fact that Indonesia is predominantly Muslim country bordering a Christian country has contributed to the tension between the two. There is no official state religion in Timor-Leste, and the constitution specifically says that it is a secular state in which freedom of religion is guaranteed for all citizens.

The stained glass window in the photo, showing Mary and Joseph with Jesus as a child, can be seen in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Dili.

Answer: Textiles

Timor-Leste's main industries at the start of the 21st century were textiles (mostly hand-woven, as shown in the photo of women weaving the traditional tais cloth for which Timor-Leste is known), printing, soap manufacture and other handicrafts. About a fifth of the population was unemployed, and depended on subsistence activities, with around half of the people of Timor-Leste living below the internationally-recognized poverty line. In 2010, the Human Development Index, a measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, child welfare and overall standard of living that is used to compare countries, ranked Timor-Leste in 123rd place of the 172 countries listed, which placed it near the bottom of the medium-developed category. This was an improvement from 158th (low development) ten years earlier.

There is a significant petroleum and natural gas field in the waters between Timor-Leste and Australia, development of which has been a matter of dispute between the two countries. It is hoped that they will provide not only a source of income for Timor-Leste, but also a reduced dependency on imported petroleum products, which make a significant contribution to the country's balance of trade deficit (in 2009, imports were around 200 million dollars, while the value of exports was only about a tenth that much).

Answer: Coffee

By world standards, Timor-Leste's coffee industry is small, less than 1% of the world's volume, but it is significant as a source of income for about a quarter of the population. They have benefited from organizing themselves into cooperatives, and providing organic coffee that is marketed overseas under the Fair Trade banner.

The proceeds from the Cooperativa Café Timor go back to the communities, and have helped establish a number of rural health clinics, both fixed and mobile.