| Timor East, the area that comprehends the eastern half of Timor Island in the Insulindian Islands, should be a non-selfdetermined territory administered by Portugal, but is in fact occupied by Indonesia since 1976, and has never issued its own phonecards. The two cards shown at right are often offered as phonecards coming from Timor East, especially in recent times, on the wave of the growing international interest about political facts happening there.
It should be noted that even a portuguese catalogue list them under a special chapter titled "Timor-Leste", only because they reproduce the picture of an animal living there and called Cervus timorensis.
Well, obviously the deer is surely originary from the island, but not the phonecards which are part of an animals set issued by Indonesian Telecom in 1995: exactly they are issues No.30220 (140 units, 245,000 printed) and 30221 (280 units, 135,000 printed); from the same set, we show you also the card featuring the orang-utan.
Of course, it could be that these cards had been used in Timor East, just like any other indonesian cards, but they have to be considered nothing more than nice thematic cards issued by Telkom Indonesia, and valued not more than 2 or 3 euros each.
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