Santa Cruz Cemetery

Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili is the site of a 1991 massacre in which occupation forces fired on mourners during a funeral procession, killing many young demonstrators. Foreign footage of the violence reached international audiences and became a turning point in world attention to the territory's cause. The walled Catholic cemetery, dense with graves and crosses, remains a place of remembrance and pilgrimage. Its role in the independence struggle gives it a solemn significance beyond that of an ordinary burial ground in the capital.