Irish Examiner View: Two decades of terror since Bali bombing
A police officer stands guard at the area of the ruins of The Sari Club after a bomb blast destroyed the club, killing more than 180 people and injuring hundreds others in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, in 2002. Picture: Itsuo Inouye/AP
Twenty years ago next week, an event took place on the other side of the world which had profound effects on the lives of thousands and the economies of dozens of countries.
It is marked by poignant memorials along the beaches and mountains of Australia’s eastern, southern, and western coasts; opposite London’s St James’s Park; at Singapore Cricket Club, and in a garden of remembrance in Ho Chi Minh City, still better known by many as Saigon.
October 12, 2002, was the moment terrorists decided that young pleasure-seekers and tourists were regarded as targets. Before 2002, urban guerrillas, violent independence movements, separatists, sectarians, and religious extremists tended to focus on infrastructure, commerce and capitalism, government agencies, police, army, and transport systems.
The pattern of such actions in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s was dominated by the febrile politics of the Middle East, “liberation” movements in Europe, Asia, and South America; the conflict in the North; Marxist theory.
All this was changed by al Qaeda. While it was the evil guiding force behind the 2001 New York and Washington cataclysm, it was the Bali bombs 13 months later which declared war on the young generation.
The outrage in the Indonesian archipelago claimed the lives of 202 people from 23 nations, with hundreds injured. More than 80 young people had come from surfing and sports clubs in Australia for end-of-season holidays. The grandson of a North Tipperary family, on tour with his rugby team from Singapore, lost his life. Other Irish visitors were hurt.
The location was known as “the Island of the Gods”, but the first headline proclaimed “Paradise lost as 187 die in Bali bloodbath”.
The attack, attributed to Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah, began with a backpack suicide bomb detonated in Paddy’s Pub, then owned by a Cork woman, which made customers flee onto the streets. There, a 2,260lb (1,020kg) car bomb outside The Sari Club was exploded by a second suicide bomber. The result was carnage.
Bombers returned to Bali three years later, causing another 20 fatalities and more than 100 casualties.
Since then, there has been a list of attacks aimed at those who value the freedom to enjoy themselves in whichever way they choose. Hotels, cinemas, and cafes saw shootings and bombings in a four-day rolling raid across Mumbai in 2008; the deadliest attack in France since the Second World War was fought at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, bars and restaurants, and at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris in 2015.
At an Aria Grande show at the Manchester Arena, 23 people were killed and 1,017, many of them children, injured in May 2017.
Such attacks have implications for all who are libertarian by instinct. Bali was the beginning of the road, and we should remember all its young victims on Wednesday. But we have not reached the end of the journey yet.
The saying, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”, is attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Whether he said it or not, the sentiment has relevance to the modern world.
