Happy birthday to the Vietnamese national liberation leader and communist revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh! Under his leadership, the Vietnamese Liberation Front was formed, which kicked out the French colonialists and US imperialists from Vietnam.

At the age of 21, Ho Chi Minh left his country to find an answer to the question of Vietnamese liberation in the international revolutionary movement. He lived in New York, London, and Paris and became involved in the global socialist movement. In France, he even became a founding member of the French Communist Party.

Later, he studied and worked in different governmental institutions in the Soviet Union and China, serving as a senior Comintern agent around Southeast Asia. In the late 1930s, he went to China to serve as an advisor to the Communist armed forces.

Upon returning to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh played a significant role in uniting the left factions and forming the party that led the liberation movement against French and American imperialism.

Centuries of colonial rule and a genocidal occupation finally ended for East Timor on this day in 2002, becoming the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. Independence was won through the heroic resistance led by socialist revolutionary guerrillas and international pressure.

Portugal colonized East Timor in the 16th century, while the Dutch colonized the western part, which later became Indonesia. Portugal abandoned their colony in 1974.

The Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN) declared independence in 1975, leading to an Indonesian invasion to prevent a communist state, causing the death of up to 20% of the population.

FRETILIN's guerrilla wing fought relentlessly, inspired by Mao Zedong, Amilcar Cabral, and Cuba's anti-imperialist resistance. In 1998, a popular uprising in Indonesia forced dictator Suharto to resign. This paved the way for a UN referendum, resulting in a majority voting for independence.

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