Don’t let monument to peace create anger create division

WHILE distress at plans to build a nightclub at the site of the Sari Club is understandable, the best way to honour the dead is to be a good friend and neighbour to Indonesia, writes HAYLEY SORENSEN

Foreign tourists visit the monument dedicated to the victims of the 2002 Bali bombings in the Kuta section of Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia.

IN the middle of bustling Kuta, amid the nightclubs and markets, is a striking memorial.

Two hundred and two names are etched into a marble plaque, surrounded by a high wall of intricately carved stone.

For more than a decade, it has been a place of pilgrimage for those wishing to pay their respects to those killed in the 2002 Bali bombings.

The bombings at Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar are rightly seared into Australians’ consciousness. Eighty-eight of the victims were Australians, beach holiday makers and teammates on end-of-year footy trips.

It might have been on foreign soil, but it felt like an attack directly on Australia.

That’s why the initial reaction last week to the news plans for a “peace park” at the site of the Sari Club had been shelved was one of sadness and in some cases, anger.

For more than a decade, advocates have been fundraising to pay for a second memorial on the vacant site, which is currently functioning as a car park. The frustration that effort might be wasted is understandable. The fact the peace park proponents were asked to immediately pay millions to have the top floor set aside as a memorial added to the hurt.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the plan to build a five-storey restaurant and nightclub at the site was “deeply distressing”.

Australia’s Consul-General in Bali was working to “resolve” the issue with local authorities, he said.

“For the 88 Australians, and their families, for whom this is rightly — and it is for all Australians, I think — a very sacred place, I am deeply disturbed, deeply disturbed by the decision that would see an entertainment complex put on that site,” Mr Morrison said.

Professor Len Notaras, who was Royal Darwin Hospital general manager at the time of the bombings and helped co-ordinate the care of the 75 victims who were treated there, told the NT News he was “appalled” at the plan.

“There are not many events in Australia’s history where 88 civilians in the space of a few minutes were killed,” he said.

“The site itself is sacred, it represents a terrible moment that should never be forgotten — and to put up a restaurant, that means it’s going to be lost.”

But not all the survivors agree. One who phoned into Melbourne radio station 3AW said it was “preposterous” for Australia to presume to tell Indonesians what they should and shouldn’t do with the site.

“I don’t see it as a holy site,” the survivor said.

“It’s not a burial ground for people. It’s where it happened.

“Are we going to stop using Flinders Street, or Bourke Street, because terror attacks happened there?”

While the bombings were tragic event in Australia’s history, it was a sorrowful day for Indonesia and the Balinese as well. It is still the deadliest terror attack in Indonesia’s history. Thirty-eight of the victims were local.

Indonesia is a sovereign country, with its own rules and should be left to make its own decisions, free from intervention from foreign governments, including Australia’s.

We don’t have the right to demand the land be set aside forever as a mausoleum.

The best way to honour the dead is to respect Indonesia’s sovereignty, to continue to visit and love Bali and carry on our friendships with its people.

The terrorists who carried out the bombings wanted to maim and kill as many Westerners as they could.

They also wanted to create division and hatred between the Muslim and Western worlds.

We shouldn’t let a dispute over a monument to peace and to unity accomplish that goal for them, almost two decades after the bombs went off.

And that striking memorial isn’t going anywhere.

Hayley Sorensen is the Sunday Territorian’s resident columnist.