October 13, 2003

Bali economy victim of nightclub bombings

Indonesia's famous tropical resort isle still struggles with terrorism's effects

ERIC ELLIS

UBUD, INDONESIA -- One year later, Nyoman Sada's hands reveal the impact of the Bali nightclub bombings.

Mr. Sada, a 37-year-old father of three, wasn't injured in the deadliest terrorist act since the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The Bali attacks killed 202 people, including two Canadians and 38 Indonesians. But the harm to him and three million of his fellow Balinese has been devastating.

Before last Oct. 12, Mr. Sada ran a thriving taxi service from the tiny village of Penestenan, located outside the bohemian cultural centre of Ubud, about an hour from notorious Kuta Beach, where the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar were bombed by Islamic extremists enraged at the drinking, the drugs and the skimpy dress at such hot spots.

But as tourists fled Bali after the bombings, Mr. Sada saw his taxi business evaporate. A month after the attack, as Balinese Hindu priests led a massive purification ceremony to cleanse the island of evil, he was working a family rice paddy. His hands were horribly bloodied, blistered from the sickle he hadn't wielded in 20 years, and his legs were coated with kerosene to repel leeches.

"There's no business; the economy has gone," he lamented late last month. "But I have to feed my family." He was also ill from a change in diet, reverting to local fare from the quasi-Western diet he had embraced, like many newly prosperous Balinese.

It is like this all over Bali, said Mr. Sada, who was also mayor of Penestenan. An entire generation of Balinese has been forced back to the paddy "because we have no choice."

The plight of ordinary Balinese has often been overlooked in the past year, which has been more publicly marked by the manhunt for the plotters, who mostly hailed from the neighbouring island of Java, and by the mourning -- including yesterday's ceremonies in Bali and Australia. Bali became one of Indonesia's richest provinces with the help of mass tourism, but with foreign arrivals barely half of what they were a year ago, only a few of the 100,000 Balinese jobs lost to the bombs have returned.

Bali has missed a chance to renew, according to Ibu (Mother) Luh Ketut Suryani, one of the Island's most prominent Hindu intellectuals and cultural leaders.

"We are just going back to what we did before, the same things that brought the foreigners and their behaviour and that also attracted the extremists," she said. "We must think why the bombs came here but people still think that tourism is the best. But with the war in Iraq and SARS, this type of mass tourism is impossible."

A professor of psychiatry at Bali's Udayana University, Ibu Suryani ruffled feathers last year by declaring, a day after the bombs, that the attacks were a "good thing" that would cleanse Bali of foreign influence.

"This is the punishment of God," she said. "We now have prostitution, gambling, pedophilia, drugs, casino. These things are not Balinese, they are brought in by foreigners."

A year on, Ibu Suryani's view is little different. Tourism, she said, should not be "the one purpose of our lives. Every family has been affected, 100,000 people have no jobs. We must diversify."

Her comments betray a profound political shift in Bali this past year. The island has long been Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri's political heartland, a symbol of Indonesia's enduring secularism that is now challenged by the homegrown Jemaah Islamiyah, the extremist group financed by al-Qaeda that carried out the the bombings. The part-Balinese Megawati's PDI-P party carried Bali with almost 90 per cent of the vote in the 1999 election that brought her to office.

But Balinese have now lost confidence in their remote President, as she campaigns for re-election next year.

"I think she would get around 35 to 40 per cent now, at most," said Herman Basuki, the Muslim editor of Nusa, Bali's leading newspaper.

Bali's disillusionment with Megawati set in soon after the bombings. Across Bali, village banjars (councils of elders) moved to replace state security functions with traditional pecalang, the banjar's passive-aggressive vigilantes. Balinese were also unimpressed that Megawati didn't attend the cleansing ceremony a month after the attacks. Though she was in Bali last week for a conference of regional leaders, she did not stay on for the weekend's commemoration.

So is Bali getting back to normal? With one eye on the half-full planes arriving at the airport, Balinese insist the island is much safer now. The swift justice meted out to the bombers -- most of whom gleefully admitted their role and welcomed their death sentences -- has helped rebuild confidence. Attracted by massive discounting, tourist traffic is picking up. But it has not yet recovered.

And despite myriad arrests of extremists by Indonesian, Australian and U.S. security forces, the travelling public is not convinced that Southeast Asian terrorism has been defeated: the August bombing of Jakarta's Marriott Hotel showed that the terrorists can still strike.

In Bali, uemployment remains widespread, wages low and petty crime is on the rise.

Two weeks ago, as Australian and Indonesian officials prepared to mark the bombings' anniversary this past weekend, Nyoman Sada was back hassling for fares. He's thinner now, is no longer the village mayor and his hands are smoothing again from driving his cab.

"Paddy life is very tough. I do this now with my hands . . .," he said, slapping a 100,000-rupiah [about $15] note into a card game as he waited for the tourists who are cautiously dribbling back.

"I make money by gambling."