Bali administration prepares mass grave for bomb victims
Bali administration prepares mass grave for bomb victims
I Wayan Juniartha and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
The Bali administration has set aside a plot of land in the
Mumbul area of Jimbaran subdistrict, some 30 kilometers south of
the provincial capital of Denpasar, for a mass grave for
unidentified victims of the Oct. 12 bombing in Kuta.
"There are several state-owned plots of land in that area, and
we have decided to use one of them as the site for the mass
burial," Deputy Governor I Gusti Bagus Alit Putra said on
Tuesday.
The death toll in the bombing reached 190 after six victims
who were evacuated to Australia died of their injuries on
Tuesday. Most of the fatalities were foreigners.
Alit Putra declined to give the exact location of the plot or
how large the designated mass grave would be.
Addressing concerns by several customary villages or desa
adat, which do not want unidentified bodies buried on their land
for fear that they will defile the spiritual realm of the
villages, Alit Putra stressed that the designated land belonged
to the provincial administration, not the customary villages.
"After all, the area around the designated land is already
filled with several different cemeteries," he said.
The only place that matches Alit Putra's description is
located next to the Ngurah Rai highway connecting Denpasar and
Kuta, and linking the airport and the tourist resort of Nusa Dua.
Alit Putra said the bodies of the unidentified victims could
either be buried directly or cremated first.
He said the Bali administration was waiting for a forensic
team to complete its work trying to identify the victims before
beginning the process of the mass burial.
"As soon as the forensic team completes the identification
process on the bodies and decides that some of the bodies are
beyond identification, and after securing permission from the
countries that lost citizens in the bombings, then we will begin
to move the bodies to the designated plot," he said.
As of Tuesday, the team has identified 52 bodies.
Lanang Rudiarte, director of Sanglah General Hospital in
Denpasar, said that of the 52 bodies, 20 had been returned by
their families to their respective countries, including two
Americans, two Australians, three Britons, one Equadorean and one
German.
Lanang also said that his team, assisted by an Australian
expert, had started to embalm the victims.
The medical personnel, assisted by experts from Australia,
Singapore and Thailand, had also started conducting DNA tests on
the victims.
"Thus far, tests have been conducted on their blood,
fingernails and their teeth," Lanang said.
Unlike the first three days after the tragedy, only a few
foreign volunteers were seen in Sanglah on Tuesday as some of
them had been replaced by volunteers from the International
Committee of the Red Cross along with local counterparts from the
Indonesia Red Cross.
Meanwhile, Gantry Amalo, a local volunteer from Humanitarian
Volunteer Network for Bali (JRKB), said that Sanglah had received
more than Rp 350 million in aid from various sources, including
local and foreign institutions.
The hospital, nevertheless, still complained that the money
was not enough to cover all its expenses as it still had to pay
Rp 31 million in debt to local drug stores, Gantry said.
The central government has promised assistance amounting to
some Rp 1 billion to a number of hospitals, including Sanglah.
Meanwhile, the Bali administration also promised to assist the
families of the dead to the tune of Rp 3 million each as well as
the injured, with Rp 2.5 million each.
Lanang said that currently Sanglah hospital was only treating
21 injured, mostly locals, while some others were being cared for
at the Puri Raharja and Dharma Husada Hospitals in Denpasar.
"The 121 injured foreigners have been evacuated to various
countries, including Australia and the U.S.," Lanang said.