With East Timor marking ten years of independence on Sunday, it's relevant to ask which nation in particular they are celebrating independence from.
It could be the colonial master Portugal, as the UN did not accept the Indonesian invasion, and East Timor was officially Portuguese from 1702 until independence in 2002.
In the minds of many, it's obviously Indonesia, given the brutal repression of the period of Indonesian occupation between 1975 and 1999.
But there is also a sense in which East Timorese value independence because it's a reminder that they do not hold ties and obligations to Australia, which might have become their neo-colonial master.
After the widespread killing of its people and systematic destruction of East Timor's infrastructure when the Indonesians left in 1999, Australia came to help. It played a leading role in INTERFET, the UN-backed peacekeeping force commanded by General Peter Cosgrove.
Because nothing worked, Australia lent infrastructure to East Timor. For example Telstra's Australian mobile phone network was extended to include parts of East Timor.
Australia was on a path to cementing its ties with East Timor, which it hoped would be grateful and compliant. But it didn't turn out that way. Very soon it became clear that East Timorese did not want such a relationship with Australia, which history had taught them to regard with caution. The help received had been on Australia's terms, East Timor had many friends, and it was ready to move on.
Indeed it put obstacles in the way of further assistance from Australia, which may or may not have been intentional. Its interim leaders chose to adopt Portuguese and not the more pragmatic English as the language with which they would communicate with the outside world. Rather than the mooted Australian dollar, they took the US dollar as their unit of currency. They adopted a legal system based on that of the Portuguese.
The years after independence saw Australia become increasingly 'on the nose' for East Timorese. We used our muscle to try to dictate a share of oil revenue from the Timor Sea which they perceived as unfair. This was a reminder that Australian maneuvering to secure more oil went back to 1974, when Portugal lost its grip, and officials in Canberra were arguing that Australia would get a better deal if Indonesia controlled Timor.
East Timor believed Australia owed a debt of gratitude to it for the assistance rendered by its citizens to Australian guerrilla fighters