A GRAVE ARGUMENT

On the surface the outrage is understandable. There are plans to build a new restaurant and bar on the site of the Sari Club where more than 200 people –including 88 Australians -- died in the Bali bombings in 2002. The Age newspaper story appears under the headline Anger at Sari Club Site Plan and the report quotes unnamed survivors as saying patrons of the new establishment will be’ dancing on their mates’ graves’.

It’s terrible. Shows no respect for the dead. And a group called the Bali Peace Park foundation is also upset because the Australian Government has not given them tax-free charity status to build a permanent park memorial at the site in the middle of Bali’s tourist area in Kuta.

But just stop a bit –as my grandmother would say. Who are we to tell an Indonesian businessman what he can or cannot do with his property? The club site has sat there barren, forlorn and disused for seven years. Last time I saw it it had a bit of a corrugated iron fence at the front.

Sure, 88 Australians died there but so did more than 100 other people including Indonesians.

It would be great to see a memorial plaque incorporated into whatever the development is but people will not be ‘dancing on mates’ graves’ as The Age so graphically put it. No more than people who work in the replacement buildings at the World Trade Center’s Ground Zero will be dishonouring the 3000 people who died there when that massive project is completed in downtown Manhattan.

I have raised a similar issue before when Australians have attacked Turkey for building roads at Gallipoli. It’s their country. We were an invading army from afar trying to destroy them. We are lucky the Turks have preserved Anzac Cove and its surrounds as a war memorial. And they have done it beautifully and with eternal respect.

But what if the Japanese Government suddenly demanded that we hand over Fort Denison in the middle of Sydney Harbour as a memorial to the mini-sub  sailors who were killed near there in World War Two?

As I said, it would be great if the developers of the Bali bombing site acknowledge the terrorists’ carnage that took part there but to try to stop the project would be like demanding the Taj Mahal Hotel  in Mumbai can’t stay in business because some Australian businessmen died there this year.

Monday,August 24, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009