>At 8:12 PM +1000 10/15/02, Jill Jones wrote:
>>How naive can Australia be? Is one
>>Australian worth more than one Balinese? The answer is obvious and it's one
>reason why I have refrained from comment, apart from the above.
Yes.
One other thing: the constant refrain of "Paradise Lost" and "End of
Innocence", &c. It reminds me of the Port Arthur killings, when we
had the same kind of headlines. They amazed me at the time: how
could Port Arthur be considered "innocent", when it was the site of
such human sadism and suffering? Australia will continue to be this
naive until it admits its history (and therefore its actual present):
this seems as true of what's happening in Indonesia as with Port
Arthur. My sister was in Bali two years ago, and said that then she
didn't feel safe, that things had changed over the past decade: the
Balinese were saying that "witchcraft" (ie, politics) had started up
again, and people were disappearing; and there were also rumours of
Christian Muslim sectarian violence, which were hushed up because of
the tourist trade. And she also saw an increasing resentment by the
Balinese against the excesses and disrespect of Western, especially
Australian, tourists.
The stories of Balinese having to lie on hospital floors until the
Westerners were flown out to better hospitals seem to confirm all
this, unfortunately. It would be nice if the Australian government
would fly out the injured Balinese as well.
Best
Alison
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Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
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