Flag: Timor-Leste

A young Southeast Asian nation; the flag shows a red field, two triangles and a star.

Timor-Leste shares the island of Timor with Indonesia and lies about an hour's flight from Darwin, Australia. It was a Portuguese colony for centuries, was occupied by Indonesia from 1975, and became fully independent on 20 May 2002 after a UN-backed vote. The capital is Dili, the official languages are Tetum and Portuguese, and most of its roughly 1.3 million people are Catholic. "Leste" is simply Portuguese for "east", so Timor-Leste and East Timor are the same place.

The flag is red with a black triangle at the hoist overlapping a longer yellow triangle, and a white five-pointed star on the black. The constitution spells out the colours: yellow for the traces of colonialism, black for the obscurantism that must be overcome, red for the struggle for liberation, and the white star for peace and the light that guides the way. The design comes from the flag of Fretilin, the independence movement, first flown in 1975, and it was raised again at the independence ceremony in 2002.

What does it mean when someone sends 🇹🇱?

"This is Timorese" or "I am Timorese", usually with pride.

Most often it sits next to a name, a city, a football team or a headline as a country tag, or in a bio to say where someone is from. Timorese abroad, especially in Portugal, Australia and Indonesia, use it the way any diaspora uses a home flag: at celebrations, in solidarity posts and on Independence Day, 20 May. Travellers add it to photos from Dili or the beaches of Atauro. Read it as plain and warm; it carries no slang meaning.