Rosa Bonaparte

Rosa Filomena "Muki" Cardoso Bonaparte Soares (18 February 1957 – 8 December 1975) was an East Timorese revolutionary and women's rights activist. Born in what was then Portuguese Timor, in 1973 she won a scholarship to study in Portugal, where she joined the Casa dos Timores and became involved in Marxist and anti-colonial politics. Returning to Timor in late 1974, she was a founding member of Fretilin and served on the party's central committee. Known for her intensity and small figure, she was called "the petite revolutionary", "Rosa Luxemburg", and to her Fretilin comrades, "Muki".

In August 1975, Bonaparte became the first secretary-general of the Popular Organization of Timorese Women (OPMT), the Fretilin women's wing. As OPMT leader, she led the group's humanitarian work in establishing nurseries for orphans and other vulnerable children, and oversaw literacy, health, and livelihood initiatives for Timorese women. Bonaparte was present for Fretilin's unilateral declaration of independence from Portugal on 28 November 1975, and was reportedly the first to unfurl the new flag of the Democratic Republic of East Timor. She was killed by Indonesian soldiers in Dili during the invasion of East Timor. Bonaparte is remembered today for her significant role in East Timor's women's movement and anticolonial struggle during the 1970s.

Early life and education Rosa Filomena Cardoso Bonaparte Soares was born on 18 February 1957 in Manatuto, a small town on the northern coast of what was then Portuguese Timor. Her father, Joaquim Bonaparte Soares, was a Manatuto native and worked for Correios, Telégrafos e Telefones, a Portuguese mail and telecommunications company. Bonaparte's studies in Portugal coincided with the April 1974 Carnation Revolution, after which Timorese political parties began to operate openly. Along with many other former Casa dos Timores members, she participated in Fretilin's grassroots mobilization work, including organizing political education classes, which led to the formation of the National Union of Timorese Students (UNETIM) in October 1974. Within weeks, the OPMT had grown to 7,000 members, with chapters across the colony. The manifesto condemned barlake (the traditional Timorese wedding traditions, including bride price), polygamy, and the sexual exploitation of women by "colonialist bosses". Bonaparte wrote several more articles in the Jornal do Povo Mau Bere and another published in a Trotskyist newspaper and reproduced posthumously in 1977 in East Timor News, the Australian solidarity movement's publication. By the first week of September 1975, the OPMT had established childcare centers in Dili, Maubisse, and Turiscai to serve orphans and others affected by the previous month's fighting between Fretilin and the Timorese Democratic Union, a conservative political party. Under Bonaparte's leadership, the organization also carried out literacy drives for Timorese women, which were taught, for the first time, in Tetum rather than Portuguese. With the help of several Timorese members of the pro-Indonesian Timorese Popular Democratic Association, the soldiers began identifying Fretilin members and their relatives among the crowd. Her body was dumped into the harbor, and was sighted on the shore the following day. She was one of only four women to share the honor among the 61 awardees. Part of an initiative by the Ministry of Education to improve East Timor's primary school curriculum, the book was published in Tetum and Portuguese.

Bonaparte is commemorated in the Jardim Rosa "Muki" Bonaparte, a garden located within a prominent roundabout in the Mandarin area of Dili. The garden was donated by the government or Ireland and later rehabilitated by a Singaporean business. In Manatuto, where Bonaparte was born, an avenue also bears her name.