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".