On 30 August 1999, thousands queued before voting in Balide, Dili, East Timor. At a polling station run by the United Nations Mission in East Timor, voters chose between autonomy within Indonesia and a path toward independence.
Photographic records from the Australian War Memorial and ANTARA preserve the line from different viewpoints. The UN-administered procedure, including checks of registration and identity documents, created an order for exercising one vote per person amid political tension.
Ultimately, 78.5 per cent rejected the autonomy proposal. That result should not be projected backward onto the queue. On that morning, residents were converting a long wait into individual choices whose total had not yet been counted.