East Timor or Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic
Republic of Timor-Leste is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises
the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco,
and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island surrounded by
Indonesian West Timor. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated
by the Timor Sea. The country's size is 15,007 square kilometres (5,794 sq mi).
Dili is its capital.
Cristo Rei of Dili (Christ the King of
Dili) is a 27.0-metre-high (88.6 ft) statue of Jesus located atop a globe in
Dili, East Timor. The statue was designed by Mochamad Syailillah, who is better
known as Bolil. The statue was officially unveiled by Soeharto in 1996 as gift
from the Indonesian Government to the people of Timor Timur, the then
Indonesian province. The statue is one of the main tourist attractions in East
Timor.
The statue, and the globe on which it
rests, are situated at the end of the Fatucama peninsula, facing out to the
ocean and can be reached by climbing some 597 steps. The idea of raising the
Cristo Rei statue was proposed by the East Timor governor José Abílio Osório
Soares to President Suharto. It was intended as a present for the 20th
anniversary of East Timor's integration into Indonesia.
Suharto appointed the director of
national airline Garuda Indonesia to lead the project. Garuda was given the
responsibility to find capital for funding the project, and raised 1.1 billion
rupiah (US$123,000). However, that was not sufficient to erect the statue, and
contributions from East Timorese civil servants and businessmen were needed to
complete the project, which eventually cost more than 5 billion rupiah
(US$559,000).
It took almost a year of working to
create the body of the statue, which was fabricated by 30 workers in Sukaraja,
Bandung. It was made of 27 separate copper sections, which were then loaded
onto three trailers and shipped to Dili. Reconstruction of the statue,
including the globe and a 10-meter-high cross, took three months.
It was unveiled on 15 October 1996.
Roman Catholic bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, together with President
Suharto and East Timor Governor José Abílio Osório Soares, directly witnessed
the revelation of this statue from the air using a helicopter.
The monument (statue, globe and
pedestal) is 270 meters high, a reference to the integration of East Timor as
the 27th province of Indonesia. The statue and globe are 34 meters high, two
times 17, an allusion to Indonesian independence day (17 August 1945). The
statue is oriented towards the west, which some believed as the direction of
Jakarta.
Sources :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Timor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristo_Rei_of_Dili
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