A week ago the Voice of East Timor, the little tabloid newspaper which serves the former Portuguese colony, began publishing full-page messages from the United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) in four languages: English, Indonesian, Portuguese and Tetun - the most common indigenous tongue. At the same time Radio UNAMET went on the air in the capital Dili, broadcasting three hours a day, with each quarter of an hour allocated to one of the four languages.
The basic UNAMET message is that on August 8th the people will be asked to decide in a referendum whether they prefer autonomy as part of Indonesia or complete independence. The media campaign is aimed at informing the estimated 400,000 voters of how the ballot will be conducted.
Two hundred centres will be opened across the country to register all people born in East Timor aged 17 and over.
The voting will be protected by 284 civilian police from 13 countries (including Ireland), who will be deployed soon under retired Australian police commissioner, Alan Mills.
No one will know how people voted. The UN will stay on in East Timor regardless of the outcome. Such reassurances are necessary for a frightened population which has been subject to a bloody four-month campaign of intimidation by pro-Jakarta militias, orchestrated by Governor Abilio Soares, a former official of the tiny prointegration party Apodeti which colluded with the invaders 24 years ago.
The UN has brought the first ray of hope to the people since the visit of Pope John Paul in October 1989. The opening on June 3rd of the UNAMET headquarters in a former teachers' training college, located just below the hills which rise up spectacularly from the outskirts of Dili, produced an emotional outpouring from the huge crowd present.
The UN mission, which will soon have 900 international staff, has also brought new life to the old colonial town. The streets are filling up with the first of 275 UN vehicles, mainly Toyota land cruisers. Three white UN helicopters clatter across the tropical skies, and a Hercules C130 plane has begun commuting from the UNAMET assembly base in Darwin, Australia.
The international mission is also bringing employment to a neglected country, where the schools and civil service and the small businesses are run mostly by immigrants from Indonesia.
Students from Dili University are being snapped up as interpreters, guides and office staff by the UN which lays down three conditions: that they can speak English, promise to give up political activity, and do not talk to journalists. This creates a problem for the growing press corps, which includes international news agencies and several European and Australian journalists, as these young people have been their contact with the population in the past.
Accommodation is also suddenly in big demand with the arrival of the UN officials. Dili has only three small hotels, the Turismo where most of the press stay, the New Resende, and the Makhota which is favoured by Indonesian officials and has a portrait of Governor Soares in the lobby.
Some renovation of old guest houses is going on but the East Timorese do not have the capital to take advantage of business opportunities offered by nearly 1,000 foreigners with nothing on which to spend their money.
In these conditions, East Timor is a hardship posting for the outsiders. Dili, plagued by mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue fever, was once described by Joseph Conrad in his novel Victory as "that highly pestilent place". Its restaurants are basic, taxis are old wrecks which disappear shortly after dark and there is no night life.
All this could change if East Timor wins its independence with the help of the UN and brings to an end a century of unrelenting repression and blood-letting. An estimated 3,000 East Timorese were killed in a rising against harsh Portuguese rule in 1910-12. In the 1940s, about 50,000 died at the hands of Japanese soldiers. An Australian War Graves commission found in 1947 that the Portuguese colonists still imposed "forced labour under the whip".
The April 1974 revolution in Portugal brought a brief taste of freedom, but was soon followed by the Indonesian invasion which, according to Adam Schwarz in his book on Suharto's Indonesia, A Nation in Waiting, claimed 100,000 East Timorese lives from 1976-1980.
Many more have died since, including at least 50 in the Dili massacre of November 12th, 1991 - about which Governor Soares remarked infamously, "I think far more should have died" - and up to 200 in the terror this year. Pro-independence leaders say the former colony, which the Indonesian army runs as its fiefdom, could stand on its own two feet.
"We are not rich but we are not poor," said David Ximenes, chairman of CNRT, the resistance umbrella group. "For the first 10 years we will need support for reconstruction.
After 10 years we will not be a burden." He looks forward to the day when the Voice of East Timor reports that the Indonesian parliament has accepted a vote for independence and that the little country - the size of Northern Ireland - can face the 21st century on its own.