In the course of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, the building served as a refuge; more recently, it was damaged during the violence of September 1999.
[1][2] The building has always been owned by members of the Lay extended family of East Timor,[1][2][3] all of whom probably originated in the Chinese province of Guangdong.
[1] The family has survived every major East Timorese event since the building was constructed, including Portuguese colonialism, Indonesian invasion, occupation, and then destruction, and later the UN-supervised period of rebuilding.
[1] A Chinese trader from Dili, Chong Kui Yan, and his family were amongst those refugees; in 1984, he told Amnesty International that ultimately there were more than 100 people staying in the building.
[6]: 34 In a statement to the Committee on International Relations of the United States House of Representatives on 23 March 1977, James Dunn, an Australian public servant and diplomat, wrote that an informant had told him that the Indonesians had become enraged that an Australian flag was protruding from Toko Lay's third floor; the Indonesians, he wrote, had gone up and shot all of the Chinese men in the building.
[7] Chong Kui Yan's account to Amnesty International of the events in Dili on the morning of the invasion included the following: "The Indonesians first attacked at about 6.30 am.
One person, Tsam I Tin, who had come to Dili from Same, came out of the house next to the Toko Lay to surrender and was shot dead.
[5]: 26 [6]: 35, 40, 44 [8] At the harbour, Chong saw many dead bodies; the only one he recognised was that of Isabel Lobato, wife of the then Prime Minister of East Timor.
[1][5]: 26 [8] Amnesty International later compiled a list of 24 Chinese-Timorese reported killed in the harbour area, including the 10 men from the work detail.
[10] Later still, another witness, Erminio da Silva da Costa, told the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor that when, on the day of the invasion or the following day, he had accompanied Brigadier General Benny Moerdani around the city, they had come upon an ethnic Chinese woman near Toko Lay whose husband had been shot and killed by Indonesian troops.
By then, the shop manager was Charles Tan; he told the South China Morning Post that it was very sad to see the full extent of the damage around Dili, but also said that, "We can't be angry at the destruction of our property.
"[2] In mid 2012, a mass grave containing the bodies of 72 people, likely of Chinese ethnicity, was found at the Government Palace, near the Toko Lay building.
It was not clear whether the grave dated to the Indonesian invasion of 1975 or to an earlier time, such as World War II.
[de] identified Toko Lay as one of more than 30 historical sites across Dili forming part of the story of East Timor's 24-year resistance against Indonesian occupation.
[1][2] The stock in trade available for sale within may include Chinese-made generators and Vietnamese rice, together with a wide variety of such items as nuts, bolts, plumbing parts, pipes and plugs.