Australia still feels the pain on 20th anniversary of Bali bombings
Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, on Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary of the gruesome bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that left 202 people dead, including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesian citizens.
"Twenty years ago, an act of malice and calculated depravity robbed the world of 202 lives, including 88 Australians. Twenty years on, the ache does not dim," Albanese said at the commemoration event, which took place in Coogee, a suburb of Sydney.
"That night, the terrorists could not achieve their aim. What they struck they could not defeat, because what they struck at was the idea of ‘us’...they struck at humanity," he added.
To symbolise the Australians who lost their lives in the 2002 bombings, 88 white doves were released into the sky.
The two, almost simultaneous blasts on Bali's Kuta strip late at night on October 12, 2002 — one at Paddy's Bar, the other at the Sari Club — devastated the resort island's tourist industry.
The attacks, blamed on Southeast Asian Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiah, were intended to scare away foreigners so that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, could eventually become part of a larger Islamic caliphate.
Instead, the series of bomb attacks in Bali and Jakarta pushed Indonesia into a closer security and intelligence relationship with the United States and Australia as the government sought help in tackling Islamic militants.
Security forces detained nearly 600 militants, most of whom were jailed, since the attack.
REUTERS
