Attack and robbery

Attack and robbery

I'm an expatriate woman working in the travel industry and I
have been living in Bali for several years. As a woman, I have
always felt safe walking and driving around the island. However,
over the past year, there have been an increasing number of
muggings involving women, particularly expatriate women driving
in the Jl. Oberoi and Jl. Peti Tenget area.

Most of the women were riding a bike or motorbike and were
stopped, or driven off the road by two Indonesian men on a
motorbike. In some of these incidents, the women were threatened
with knives, before being robbed.

On March 17, 1997, on my way back from work, I turned into the
small road leading to Banjar Umulas Kauh, near Jl. Peti Tenget,
and two men overtook me very quickly. A few seconds later, they
stopped and one of the men jumped off the bike. He came towards
me with a knife and without a word snatched my bag, even though I
was already taking it off in order to give it to him. He slashed
my arm in the process.

The two men drove away leaving me with a deep knife wound,
which required three hours of stitching in Sanglah hospital.

At least twelve attacks have been reported over the past year,
all within a five kilometer area. If the police are aware of
these attacks and Intelligence Agency are supposedly "working on
the problem", why isn't more being done to prevent further
attacks?

Name and address

known to the editor