Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar – In the beginning, Bali had a wet season and a dry season. When Western artists, actors and anthropologist Margaret Mead came in the early 20th century, Bali added tourist season to its calendar. Now, courtesy of Police General Senarko Danu Ardanto, Bali has a fourth season: the island's top cop last week declared the start of "trouble season" on what Travel & Leisure magazine still calls "the world's best island".
Islamic extremist bombers have hit multiple targets on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali twice in Octobers past. Attacks on nightclubs on October 12, 2002, killed 202 people, the majority of them foreign tourists. Suicide bombings of popular restaurants last year killed 20, plus a trio of bombers. General Ardanto's force is deploying 1,000 additional officers, hoping to avoid a three-peat.
Even if peace prevails this October, the 2002 and 2005 attacks mean a lasting case of trouble in paradise. The shadow of those blasts rises every October as Australia's emerging national signature event – the public memorial – comes to Bali. Balinese have done their Hindu cleansing ceremonies and largely moved on. Indonesian authorities tolerate these now annual happenings and occasionally provide a VIP guest, but these are Australian moments to remember its 88 nationals who died in the 2002 tragedy.
Previous October 12 bombing commemorations have included survivors, relatives of victims, and even Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The memorials help reinforce Howard's assertion that Bali is Australia's September 11. But like much of Australia's interaction with its giant neighbor, the impact on Indonesia is an afterthought and Jakarta's reactions a side-effect.
Canberra's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reportedly planned to scale back the pathos last year. But when suicide bombers struck again – killing four Australians among the 23 dead – the Howard government decided to make another major show at Bali's Ground Zero at Kuta Beach. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer attended to demonstrate Australia was not intimidated by an attack on someone else's soil.
Captured documents from terrorist operative Azahari bin Husin revealed a plot to attack last year's October 12 ceremony, but the plan was reportedly abandoned due to security concerns. This year, though, the Australians are going lower key, in line with the government's warning against unnecessary travel to Indonesia due to the likelihood of attacks.
This October's pair of commemorative services are invitation only, private affairs away from the bomb sites, with no government incentives for the injured and families of the deceased to revisit. Victims attending the October 1 memorial, at a luxury hotel, were mainly Indonesians.
Star season
The foiled attack on the commemoration ceremony last year is reason to mark this 2006 "trouble season" with a star.
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan this year coincides with the bomb anniversaries. Last year, Ramadan began just before the October 12 anniversary, and just after the October 1 attacks. Perhaps Bali police can believe they've withstood the first danger points, but there's no relief until the calendar turns. Elsewhere in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority state with at least 180 million of its estimated 220 million people adherents to the faith, Ramadan has on occasion provided an excuse for Islamist violence.
Just ahead of Ramadan, the government chose to execute a trio of Christians convicted for inciting the killings of Muslims in central Sulawesi in 2000. That immediately put the focus on Amrozi, Iman Sumudra and Mukhlas, the Bali bombers of 2002, who are all awaiting execution. Balinese marched last week to demand that their death sentences be carried out, but the Poso executions may actually make the Bali executions more, not less, difficult.
As Indonesia struggles with the meaning and practice of diversity, particularly for religious outliers such as its 40 million Christian minority – larger than the entire populations of Australia and New Zealand – and Bali's 3 million or so Hindus, the Bali and Poso executions were seen as a pair, mixing revenge with loss for each camp. In that scenario, executing the Bali bombers first would have made more sense. It would antagonize the Muslim majority, but the subsequent killings of the three offending Christians would salve the wound.
Problems with the executions go beyond timing. The Poso convictions are widely considered a miscarriage of justice. Using those last three words for a headline, a recent Jakarta Post editorial stated, "The [Poso] executions will be remembered as part of the tragedies besetting the country's efforts to uphold justice for one reason: they took place while there was insufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the three uneducated men were the masterminds of the violence."
In comparison, the Bali bombing prosecutions were applauded as professional both in Indonesia and overseas, and the accused have not denied their roles – questioning only whether they deserve to be punished or rewarded for jihad against infidels. Nevertheless, widespread questioning of the Poso death sentences makes it easy for Islamic extremists to raise questions about the Bali bombers' sentences.
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the cleric jailed for his role in the first Bali attacks, told reporters, "[I]f you ask me which one is more dangerous, nude women or the Bali bombs, then my answer would be the women showing off their skin." You don't have to be an Islamist extremist or misogynist to imagine that if the Poso verdicts were the product of a flawed system and thus a miscarriage of justice, then the Bali bomber verdicts could be, too.
Even Australia has called Indonesia's administration of the death penalty into question, at least when it comes to Australian defendants.
Real victims still pained
Amid the attempts by Islamists and Australia's serial commemorators to hijack the Bali tragedies for their own purposes, the real victims of the bombings are often forgotten. The Balinese – and the thousands of other Indonesians and foreigners on the island who rely on tourism for their livelihoods – are still reeling.
Bali's economy depends on tourism for more than half of its income and jobs. Tourism cratered after the 2002 attacks, but by late 2004 it had rebounded. Last year, visitor arrivals were running at a record pace before last year's suicide bombings. Those blasts, even though the toll was relatively small and overwhelmingly local, may have a more lasting impact than the 2002 bombings.
The second strike showed that beyond any doubt Bali is a primary target for Indonesia's Islamic terrorists. The tourists are foreigners, the Balinese are Hindus, and the attacks attract international attention. No other part of Indonesia offers that winning combination for terrorists.
The immediate effect of the bombs last year wasn't as steep as in 2002 – a 43% drop in tourist arrivals the immediate aftermath, versus 57% in 2002. As expected, the gap narrowed, reaching a mere 11% by April. But since then, the gap has widened: in the prime tourist season months of July and August, arrivals were again off by more than 20%.
The biggest components in the fall have been Australians. Their arrival numbers are down 56%. Terror attacks combined with drug arrests are tipped as the reason for the dramatic drop. Whatever the reason, Balinese just wish the Australians would quit remembering so damned much. For Balinese tourism, it looks like a long, lonely trouble season.
[Gary LaMoshi has worked as a broadcast producer and print writer and editor in the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a contributor to Slate and Salon.com, and a counselor for Writing Camp, www.writingcamp.net.]