SANTO DOMINGO

DILI, East Timor (AFP) — "Guerrilla" tours cashing in on East Timor's strife-torn history have begun and whale-spotting could be a draw one day. But for now the idea of adventure — with a spot of world-class diving — is the lure for tourists trickling into the world's youngest nation. Official statistics are not yet kept in the nation that was occupied by Indonesia for 24 years and turns four next month, but industry insiders estimate about 3,000 tourists arrived in East Timor last year. It's hardly a crowd but a dramatic improvement on earlier years, says Eduardo Massa, director of East Timor's first travel agency Timor MegaTours. "It was totally different," he says of 2005. "At last we started to have groups, small groups coming, and we had several cruises coming as well ... Suddenly everybody looked at East Timor and felt confident to come here." Before that, the memory of the violence stoked by Indonesian-backed militias in 1999 was...

Rising prices and the weak dollar are hitting East Timor's poor hard The television blares Chinese-language programmes across supermarket shelves stacked with noodles, bottles of bleach and bags of rice. Outside, in Dili's dusty commercial district, the afternoon heat hangs limp and heavy. Loh Bee Choon sits in the cool of the shop, making small talk with her scattering of customers. One by one, she tots up their purchases; the medical bleeping of the scanner marking her income, dollar by dollar. Goods from Indonesia, China, Singapore, the US - but very few indeed from here in East Timor. All of which makes a lot of sense, because not much is produced in East Timor. Imports are an essential part of life and 90% of goods come from overseas. But with the US dollar - the official currency - worth less abroad now than it used to be, buying them is getting much more expensive. "It's had a big effect," Loh Bee ...

East Timor's road to independence - achieved on 20 May 2002 - was long and traumatic. The people of the first new nation of the century suffered some of the worst atrocities of modern times. An independent report has said at least 100,000 Timorese died as a result of Indonesia's 25-year occupation, which ended in 1999. Overview Overview Facts Leaders Media Indonesia invaded shortly after Portugal withdrew in 1975 and forcefully tried to subdue a resentful people and guerrillas fighting for independence. Independence followed years of oppressive rule World powers were accused of contributing to the subsequent calamity by turning a blind eye or by actively supporting the occupation by supplying wea...

Lamalera is a village which is perched on the rocky slopes of an active volcano on the southern coast of the island of Lembata, in Nusa Tenggara Timur in eastern Indonesia. An anonymous Portuguese document of 1624 describes the islanders as hunting whales with harpoons for their oil, and implies that they collected and sold ambergris. This report confirms that whaling took place in the waters of the Suva Sea at least two centuries before the appearance of American and English whaling ships at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Christian Mission has been in place in the community for a hundred years, schools have been established and a training workshop teaches carpentry. It is a fishing village in a region where most communities support themselves by agriculture. Lamalera has very little productive land, so the villagers have to fish in order to survive. Their preferred quarry is sperm whale. Catching sperm whale with hand-thrown harpoons from small open boats powered by m...