The Impact on Bali

The Impact on Bali

Karim Raslan
Lawyer
Kuala Lumpur

When a small society like Bali is subjected to a gross and
violent criminal act, the real test to its resilience lies in its
ability to weather the tragedy. Can the Balinese cope with the
aftermath? Can they prevent the inevitable recriminations and the
emotionally charged cries for reprisal-killings? Will they turn
against the Muslims in their midst? Can they manage to bring the
perpetrators to justice and recover their equilibrium?

As a regular sojourner on the island, it seems, as with most
Southeast Asian societies to possess a capacity to overcome
deeply-rooted animosities and external challenges. Balinese will
succeed in returning their island to its former stability and
prosperity. In years to come the awful bombing in Kuta will be
remembered as a terrible assault that marked the revival of the
island's fortunes and not the precursor of chaos.

There are three reasons to be optimistic: First, that the
island is not a tourist-book paradise -- it is a real place with
real societal problems and systems of managing those challenges.
Secondly, there is a culture of accommodation and consensus on
the island based around the local system of governance and the
banjars (small associations of one hundred to one hundred and
fifty families) that meet regularly every week. Thirdly, there is
a shared sense of destiny. Everyone acknowledges that tourism is
a vital pillar of the local economy.

Violence is not unknown on the island. Southeast Asia's
ultimate tourist destination is not a paradise. Frankly, the
tourist enclave of Nusa Dua is all fakery. Bali, the island is a
real place where people struggle to make a living often against
unimaginable odds. Poverty, inadequate educational facilities and
a run-down health-care system contribute to make life tough for
the majority of the population on the island. Whilst the tourist
brochures and advertising campaigns are crammed with images of
extraordinary beauty -- the terraced rice-fields, the temples,
palaces and dancers, the historical reality has always been less
alluring and infinitely more complex.

For example in the mid-1960s as the Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI) attempted an (alleged) assault on power, the fall-out for
Bali was particularly catastrophic as tens of thousands of party
members were butchered up and down the island.

If you want to get an idea of the numbers who would have been
affected by the killings, just think of the family and friends
who would have survived and how they would have felt.

Understandably, it is not a period that many Balinese choose
to refer to publicly -- the memories of those frightening months
of killings and reprisal killings remain raw and sensitive, even
after forty years. Still, the island managed to cope with the
enormity of the tragedy, emerging from a period of terrible
unrest with a sense of shared resolve instead of a set of barely
containable grievances.

An important aspect of the healing process brings to the
second point -- the many purification ceremonies undertaken by
all the local community associations -- the same ceremonies that
the tourists now crowd together to watch open-mouthed with
cameras at the ready.

As Odeck, a young prince and businessman from Ubud's royal
family explains: "Most tourists don't understand that the
ceremonies serve a real societal function. It's actually an
important way for communities to diffuse tension. The meetings
related to the ceremony force everyone in the banjar and network
of banjars called a desa adat to work together."

This means there is a system for handling local differences
and disagreements. It's also entirely separate from government
and therefore untainted by party politics.

The island's dense network of banjars has sprung into action
immediately. At meetings across Bali, community leaders have
dampened down hot-heads calling for immediate retribution.
Instead people's attention has been directed towards the need to
conduct purification ceremonies in order to cleanse the land of
the evil wrought by the bombing. For example on Oct. 31 (the full
moon of the fourth month) a substantial purification ceremony is
being planned in Kuta.

Komang Wahyu Suteja, a young hotelier says: "The informal
network of banjars and desa adats have helped to communicate a
message of peace and tolerance to the people at the grass-roots.
People are being told that we need to make special offerings to
appease the gods."

Certainly in discussions with friends on the island I've been
struck by the positive and upbeat tone that everyone has taken.
Of course this is due to a realization that the island's economic
future depends on the outside world's perception of its stability
and security. With tourism as a major pillar of the domestic
economy, everyone, without exception, understands the importance
of working together to rebuild the island's reputation.

However, some are less sanguine. They foresee darker clouds on
the horizon especially as tourist numbers drop off towards the
end of the year.

Other parts of Indonesia -- Maluku, Kalimantan, Papua and Aceh
have succumbed to the downward spiral of violence and murder.
However, Bali looks set to escape this tragic denouement. It's
dynamic tourism-led economy, its strong and resilient sense of
community as well as its culture of accommodation and consensus
should prevent the harbingers of doom from claiming the "Island
of the Gods".