At ‘Ground Zero’ in Bali: Where a Kuta Karnival is billed a ‘celebration of life’

KUTA BEACH, Bali, Indonesia – On the anniversary of 9/11, this writer didn’t go to New York to mourn that terrible tragedy and atrocity.

I flew down here to Bali to pay my respects to that other scene of brutal murder and fanaticism run wild – the Bali Bombing of October 12, 2002, in which the ruthless Jemaah Islamiyah (al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asia branch) exploded two bombs simultaneously killing 202 happily dancing and revelling tourists.

Eighty eight of the dead were Australians, while the others from 24 other nationalities, including eight Indonesians.

One of my Indonesian friends, who’s an executive here, recalled that awful night. He told me he had been about to go to bed in his home, some five kilometers away, when he heard a loud explosion which rattled his windows. It was about 11:45 p.m.

"Did you go to investigate?" I asked him.

He looked at me incredulously. "When you hear a bomb or terrible explosion, you don’t go rushing out into the night here in Indonesia! I wasn’t crazy." (He was from Java, but a typical pragmatist. A Balinese, a Hindu who believes the gods dwell on the mountaintops, the demons in hollows, cemeteries, and caves – and in between are the humans who must constantly "appease" gods, demons, and roaming spirits who infest the night, would not have answered differently.)

The JI terrorist who had detonated those ruthless bombs wasn’t a suicide bomber. He and his bunch had packed an L-300 van with explosives, parked it smack against the "SARI CLUB" on Legian street in Kuta-Legian – not on Kuta Beach itself, which is really half a kilometer away – then (when they were all safely away) triggered off his deadly device by cellphone. (Looks like the same modus operandi the Islamic terrorists, Moroccan-branch, used last March 11 in the Madrid train bombings at the Al Atocha station, where the two Goma-Dos explosive-packed knapsacks were detonated by cellphones – calledd movils in Spain.)

The resulting blast in Kuta practically demolished the "SARI CLUB", where hundreds of partying tourists were enjoying the weekend, and the "PADDY’S CAFE" across the narrow street, also packed with tourists and holidaymakers. Those not torn apart in the original blasts died agonizing deaths as the roofs caught fire and collapsed on them.

The scorched corpses, my Balinese friends recounted to me, were so badly mutilated, and in grotesque positions of agony, that photographers were banned from entering the site to snap photographs.

Up to now, at least nowhere in the neighborhood, or in Den Pasar, Nusa Dua, Sanur and Benoa, where I looked, could I find any book or pamphlet with any photos or descriptions of the tragedy. It was as if there wa a determined effort to forget the horrible incident, blot it out from memory – and get back to the business in Bali, that of tourism, and being the "island of the gods", not the terrorists.

Thirty-three Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists have been arrested and convicted, three of them to death. But dozens more remain at large and in operation – as last Thursday’s Jakarta blast the Daihatsu mini-van "bomb" attack on the Australian Embassy amply demonstrated (killing nine, wounding 180 – the dead all Indonesians and injured mostly Indonesians, too).

The Indonesian police, no doubt with the help of the nine police and forensic teams rushed to Jakarta by the Australians, identified the original owner of the suspected Daihatsu, but he claimed to have "sold" it months to "somebody" he could not identify or remember. Sanamagan.

In any event, the police are now saying that there could be other attacks, since their "information" is that another van was packed with explosives and that other JI or terrorists from some "rogue" group of that organization – who have thus far evaded the police/military dragnet – are still on the move.

When I left Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport to fly down here (an hour and fifteen minutes by GARUDA airlines Boeing 737-400), Jakarta’s shopping malls, including the immense Plaza Indonesia behind the Grand Hyatt hotel (packed with Bulgari, Cerutti Ladies, Dolce & Gabbana, Emanuel Ungaro, Tiffany & Co., and bookshops) were still jumping with customers.

I even found and purchased – would you believed? – an Arnold Schwarzenneger 2005 Calendar cheekily dubbed The Governator (a play on The Terminator) in which Schwarzie, big as life, points at you and drawls in his best Hasta la Vista Austrian cum-Chicano accent, California, I rule You . . . Baby!

Those who understand the lay-out of Jakarta may recall that the Kuningan District – the Embassy Row cum Business district – is just two blocks away from the "Mega Kuningan" district of the same name, parallel to the city’s main drag, Jalan Thamrin at the end of which is the famous "welcome" fountain around which are clustered the Grand Hyatt hotel (owned partly by former President Soeharto’s son-in-law and the Sultan of Brunei), the Mandarin Oriental, and the old, former "Hotel Indonesia" now under reconstruction as a massive hotel-tourist complex.

The J.W.Marriott Hotel, whose entire front facade was smashed by a JI terrorist car bomb on August 5 last year (2003), is on Jl. Lingkar street, Mega Kuningan Kav. The Marriott is 32 floors tall – and just to give you an idea of the damage wrought by the bomb (in which eleven were killed, and 119 badly wounded, since it was the crowded lunch hour), every floor from the ground floor to the 29th was so severely wrecked that each floor had to be restored and remodeled.

The Marriott is now completely rebuilt, its 330 rooms ready for business, but occupancy has been down to 15 to 20 percent, despite many bargain offers and even "car lotto" offers being advertised. (It’s not far, by the way, from the large Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and other diplomatic establishments, plus a huge Carrefur shopping complex. Right across the street, a Ritz-Carlton hotel and residential building is going up – talk about cock-eyed optimism!

Friends took me for tea in the restored, chrome-glitzy Marriott last Sunday, and I found that no cars are allowed to come up the old driveway which was where the car-bomb had exploded.

Instead, it has been walled in and visitors must descend at the "new" driveway right at the curb after their vehicles have been vetted by Security Guards, with bomb-sniffing under-the-car devices, and a peek inside the vehicle. The guards are always backed up by a uniformed policeman or two, toting a Belgian FAJ assault rifle. A police vehicle is also handy.

Inside, the Marriott was marketing mooncakes in line with the current Mooncake Festival (28 August to September 30 – as did my hotel, the Shangri-La Jakarta). The coffee shop, tea rooms, and cafes were plush – and inviting.

I interviewed some of the staff. One of the fatalities that dreadful August 3 had been the president and G.M. of the Deutsche Bank.

After running the bank for several years, he had just retired. He moved out of his home and into the Marriott with his family – preparatory to leaving for Germany the following day. He never made it. He was having lunch in the Coffee Shop, whose floor to ceiling glass front is right next to the driveway when the bomb exploded. Grievously wounded, the unfortunate banker was soon gone – gone to heaven, not his homeland.

Jakarta has been under attack. If you’ll remember, on August 1, 2000, a bomb almost killed our former Ambassador Leonides Caday in front of his residence on Imam Bonjol – killing two nearby persons and totalling his Mercedes Benz, sending our envoy badly-wounded to the hospital. On December 24, 2000, bombs exploded at 11 churches across Indonesia on Christmas Eve, killing 19, injuring about a hundred. One of the worst was the attack on the Jakarta Cathedral, since the bomb was detonated outside as the congregation was leaving the Cathedral – and thus got quite a number of Catholic worshippers.

Then there was the bloody bombing in the garage-basement of the Stock Exchange, Bursa Efek, a huge, beautiful structure on Jl. Sudirman, in fact their equivalent of our Ayala avenue in Makati. Since the bomb set cars and SUVs on fire, and they in turn exploded, many drivers and security guards were slain in that heartless assault.

The interesting thing is that Jakarta has taken these outrages in stride. Last Saturday and Sunday, there were birthday parties as usual in the posh restaurants, from the ex-pat enclaves to Kebayoran, to the BNI tower building, where you find "STARBUCKS" as well, and other American-style eateries.

Too many Muslims, while they rage at the recent bombing in which all the fatalities were Indonesians, are reluctant to pinpoint the JI, or ascribe the attack on Islamic Fundamentalists or fanatics. But the mood is swinging against JI and the jihadis. It’s being noted, as well, that the bomb-makers and masterminds seem to be Malaysians.

Here in Bali I went on "pilgrimage" to the site of the bombings. I was shocked. In the outside world, one imagines that the "shrine" of those 202 deaths is kept serene and spiritual. All around it was not just business as usual – the area was aswarm with tourists. (Many of them were Europeans, with even their children along with them! Quite a number were Aussies – but they had obviously arrived in Bali before the Jakarta attack). The Ralph Lauren shop beside the empty lot which was once the "SARI CLUB" had been reconstructed and was back in operation. On the other side was a building, in which a huge "Billabong" label was highlighted.

A few meters down was a souvenir shop, selling crazy touristy T-shirts, among them one mimicking the Dunkin’ Donuts logo, but saying, in bad taste, Fuckin’ Gonuts.

Everywhere were posters proclaiming the "Kuta Karnival" soon to be held – touting it as "A Celebration of Life". It’s life in the raw, in all its tawdry tourism. I guess it’s a form of revenge on the terrorists – but it won’t bring back the dead.

At the corner, though, they were building a memorial, on which will be enscribed the names of each of the 202 dead. The vulgar and the reverent, side by side: that’s Bali trying to bounce back.

But I’ll write more of this scene of tragedy in my next column.