TZ and DST changes for East Timor and Dominican Republic

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 00:37:33 +0100 (CET)
> From: Steffen Thorsen <straen at thorsen.priv.no>
> 
> * East Timor seems to have changed time zone from GMT+8 to GMT+9, around
>   the end of September.

Thanks for the notice.  I found an announcement from the United
Nations that the change occurred at midnight on Saturday, September 16.
I assume this meant at 24:00 that day.  See:
http://www.hri.org/news/world/undh/last/00-08-16.undh.html

I also found an article with some of the political background.
<http://etan.org/et99c/december/26-31/30ETMAY.htm> says that the
Indonesians set the clocks to +08 to make them match those of the
military headquarters in Bali, and that UNTAET wanted to move them
ahead to save energy.  UNTAET chief Sergio Vieira de Mello also
claimed that +09 is more geographically correct.  Since we have Dili
Mean Time at +08:22:20, this claim is technically suspect.

The article also has the following interesting quote from Joao
Carrascalao, brother of the former governor of East Timor:

   Portugal tried to change the time forward in 1974 because the sun
   rises too early but the suggestion raised a lot of problems with the
   Timorese and I still don't think it would work today because it
   conflicts with their way of life.

We don't have any record of this 1974 attempt.  Our records (from
Shanks) say that East Timor was at +08 until the Japanese captured it
in 1942, and then at +09 until the Indonesians annexed it in 1976.
Most likely our records are incomplete, but we have no better data.


> Dominican Republic:
> 
> Enrique Morales <emorales at pnud.org.do> reported to me that the Dominican
> Republic has changed the time zone to Eastern Standard Time as of Sunday
> 29 at 2 am. Some sort of "official" statement is available in Spanish
> here:
> http://www.listin.com.do/antes/261000/republica/princi.html

Thanks for this notice too.  I don't read Spanish, but I read the
following quotes from that URL as meaning that they're instituting
US-style DST as well:

   El nuevo decreto dispone además que el domingo primero de abril del
   próximo año 2001, a las 2:00 de la madrugada, todos los relojes
   sean adelantados en una hora.

   ``se ha determinado la necesidad de modificar el Decreto
   No. 820-00, para adoptar el estándar del Este de los Estados Unidos
   y Canadá''