Terrorist groups do exist

The tragedy of Saturday evening's events in Bali has left most of us here in a state of shock. Bali was always the "safe place" and the majority of us cannot really believe what has happened. Tourism had only recently begun to improve and a huge number of those visitors who had trusted in us have paid for that trust with their lives.

No group has admitted responsibility but the target was so carefully chosen. Bali is predominantly Hindu so the number of Muslims killed would be low. The majority of bars in Bali are full of prostitutes from Java who are mostly Muslims but the Sari Club has had, for many years, a very racist policy of excluding Indonesians.

Quite clever really, the perpetrators of this heinous crime have succeeded in killing more than 180 people and causing great distress to maybe thousands of other people including the injured and the relatives and friends of the dead but without impacting upon the lives of many Indonesian people. Maybe they thought that the few Muslim members of staff were dispensable.

But wait; maybe they are not so clever. The knock-on effect of this will be to cause an immediate drop in the number of tourist arrivals followed by reductions in staff and businesses going bankrupt.

What will be the result of this? It will be a backlash from the unemployed Balinese who will look for someone to blame. The people of Bali are generally very peaceful but if pushed too far -- watch out! They can be very vengeful and maybe not without justification this time.

Possibly the Indonesian government will now concede that there are terrorist groups here and start to take the action they should have been taking for the past year.

I.G.A. NGURAH WIRAKUSUMA

Denpasar, Bali