 After a further two and a half years of transition under the auspices of three different United Nations missions, East Timor achieved independence on 20 May 2002.East Timor owes its territorial distinctiveness from the rest of Timor, and the Indonesian archipelago as a whole, to being colonised by the Portuguese, rather than the Dutch; an agreement dividing the island between the two powers was signed in 1915.Colonial rule was replaced by the Japanese during World War II, whose occupation spawned a resistance movement that resulted in the deaths of 60,000 people, 13 percent of the population at the time.