Another year has passed since suicide bombers blew up two clubs in Legian, killing 202 people, and this time around the news headlines were less about the eighth anniversary than stalled plans to construct a peace park on the site of one of the nightspots.
The Peace Park Association, based in Australia, which with 88 deaths suffered the highest national toll, had planned to open the spiritual garden and museum this month. But so far, due to unsuccessful talks with the Jakarta-based land owner and an apparent dearth of raised cash to fund the purchase and construction work, the plan remains on paper only.
Most of the deaths on that night of evil carnage occurred at the jammed Sari Club, but Indonesians and foreign tourists also lost their lives at the adjacent Paddy’s Pub, a site that has since been rebuilt. Why single out the Sari site for a peace garden when there are similar plans to build commercial premises on it?
Peace Park officials maintain it would be an outrage to work and party on ground where hundreds died. (The current leaseholder of the land wants to build a bar and restaurant there.) But what of other sites where heinous acts of terrorism were carried out? Where the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York once stood, before hijacked passenger jets were flown into them just over a year before the first Bali bombings, murdering nearly 3,000 people, a memorial is being built, but also an office block and a hotel. With an eye on the tragic past, Americans are moving on with their lives.
Do we really want to turn the Legian entertainment strip at the heart of Bali’s thriving tourist trade into a mausoleum? There exists directly across from the Sari location a towering monument to those who died and the names of all who perished are etched in stone, right there. Standing between the locations of both blasts, it should
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