On this day in 1975, the UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) staged a coup in East Timor. East Timor had been a Portuguese colony since 1702 (apart from a period of occupation by Japan between 1942 and 1945), but the government of Portugal had itself been changed from a dictatorship to a democracy in a coup d’état in 1974 known as the Carnation Revolution. The new Portuguese government had been encouraging East Timor to move towards independence.
The UDT was a political party suppored by the traditional elites, favouring a gradual approach to independence. The ASDT (Timorese Social Democratic Association) favoured a rapid approach to independence and later changed its name to Fretilin (Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor). The Apodeti (Timorese Popular Democratic Association) favoured integration with Indonesia. Fretilin was becoming increasingly popular, and the coup by UDT on 11 August 1975 was designed to counteract this.
The Portuguese government showed little interest in resolving the situation, and in October 1975 two Australian television crews were murdered by Indonesian forces after they witnessed Indonesian incursions into East Timor. On 28 November 1975 Fretilin made a unilateral declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, and Indonesia responded by invading on 7 December 1975.