Mota'ain
border crossing and hamlet in Silawan, East Tasifeto, Belu, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia
Mota'ain, also spelled Motain, Mota'in or Mota Ain, is a hamlet in the Silawan village (desa), East Tasifeto district (kecamatan), Belu Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.
A major border crossing checkpoint with customs, immigration and quarantine services between Indonesia and Timor-Leste, called the Mota'ain Border Crossing Checkpoint, is located in the village. The corresponding checkpoint on the Timor-Leste side is Batugade.
Mota'ain is on the main road between Kupang in Indonesia, 290 km to the southwest, and the Timor-Leste capital Dili which is 113 km to the east. The nearest major city is Atambua, the capital of Belu Regency. The port of Atapupu is located 5 km to the west.
Border Crossing
The Mota'ain Border Crossing Checkpoint (Indonesian: Pos Lintas Batas Negara) is a modern complex providing customs, immigration and quarantine services for pedestrian and vehicular traffic crossing between Timor-Leste and Indonesia. The new complex, which replaced an earlier smaller facility which was set up when Timor-Leste separated from Indonesia, was officially opened by Indonesian president Joko Widodo on 28 December 2016. Construction of the new checkpoint complex, which is located on a 8-hectare (20-acre) site, began in 2015 and cost 82 billion rupiah.
Shooting Incident of 1999
On 10 October 1999, International Force East Timor (INTERFET) troops - a platoon from 2 RAR - patrolling along the main road were shot at as they were approaching the border bridge at Mota'ain while within East Timor territory.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mota'ain” as border crossing and hamlet in Silawan, East Tasifeto, Belu, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q127599892. Authority coordinates are -8.959, 124.951. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2015 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mota'ain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.