TTU |LINTASTIMOR.ID]-East Nusa Tenggara (Indonesia) — The quiet dawn at Post 36, Nino Hamlet, Imbate Village was shattered on Monday, August 25, 2025, by the crack of eight gunshots. What was meant to be a warning turned into a wound carved once again along the fragile line separating Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
One villager, Paulus Oki, fell after a bullet pierced his right shoulder. Twenty-four Indonesian villagers, determined to block the construction of a border pillar by Timor-Leste, retaliated with stones and machetes—the weapons of ordinary people standing against rifles.
“Seven personnel of Timor-Leste’s Unidade De Patrulhamento Da Fronteira (UPF) were armed with long rifles. The situation is now under control,” confirmed Police Inspector Wilco Mitang, spokesperson for TTU Police, after joint Indonesian Army–Police forces intervened to restore order.
At the scene, investigators recovered eight bullet casings and a single projectile. All 24 villagers involved have been summoned for questioning as part of the legal inquiry.
For the community of Imbate, this clash is not merely about international borders but about 12.56 hectares of ancestral land they believe is rightfully theirs. “That area used to mark the administrative boundary between East Nusa Tenggara and East Timor when it was still part of Indonesia. After Timor-Leste’s independence, the border was redrawn according to Portuguese–Dutch colonial demarcation lines. The people rejected it, insisting the land has been cultivated by their ancestors for generations,” explained Marcel Sara of the Regional Border Management Agency.
Here, international law speaks of treaties and demarcation, while villagers speak of bloodlines and ancestral rights. And in this contested land, bullets and machetes met once again—reminding the world that borders are not only lines on a map, but scars on human history.
