It is not yet clear who is responsible for the terrorist bombing of the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta. It has raised the spectre of the Bali bombings in 2003, although the attack specifically targeted an elite business meeting rather than tourists.
No one can support the bombing. Even the Sydney Morning Herald said that it will “achieve the opposite of what it is meant to achieve with the Indonesian people.”
The bombings will likely bring further repression and police activity targeting Muslims in Indonesia and Australia. It will be used as an excuse to maintain draconian anti-terror laws.
But dismissing the bombing as “an attack on us all”, or the product of an “evil ideology”, brings us no closer to understanding what motivates the attacks.
Australian and US troops still occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. The West did nothing to stop the recent slaughter in Gaza. Australian companies degrade Indonesian forests and farming land. The majority of Indonesians still live in poverty.
Unless the government addresses the reasons for the bombings they will keep happening.
Jakarta bombings a response to West’s crimes
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