- Title: Twenty years later, Australian Bali bombing survivor reflects on "gift of life"
- Date: 11th October 2022
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) BALI BOMBING SURVIVOR, HANABETH LUKE, SAYING: "Marc was nowhere to be found. So eventually, my friend Bobby went to the morgue. Bobby found Marc and Mel, who I had been dancing with, they suggested that they go in so I didn't need to see Marc like that. That was a very, very noble thing for them to do."
- Embargoed: 25th October 2022 06:12
- Keywords: 2002 Australia Bali Bali Bomb Bali bombing Hanabeth Luke Indonesia
- Location: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / BALI, INDONESIA
- City: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / BALI, INDONESIA
- Country: Australia
- Topics: Asia / Pacific,Australia,Bombing (non-military),Conflicts/War/Peace
- Reuters ID: LVA006107910102022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:On a trip back to Australia from England in October 2002, Hanabeth Luke and her partner Marc Gajado decided to break up the long journey home with a stopover in Indonesia's Bali to surf, unknown that their holiday would end in tragedy.
After a day on the waves, the couple went dancing with friends at Sari Club late on October 12 on the Kuta strip, an area known to be bustling with tourists. At around 11:05 p.m. (1505 GMT), a small bomb exploded at Paddy's Bar across the street, causing panic among patrons and passers-by. Less than a minute later, a deadly car bomb outside Sari Club exploded, tearing the building apart and burning it to the ground. The two blasts killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesian citizens.
Crawling through burning rubble and thick acrid black smoke, 22-year-old Luke escaped the burning building through the collapsed roof and scaled a three-metre (9.8 ft) wall over electrical wires to jump to safety. She credits her survival to being at the back of the dance floor when the blast happened.
Gajado, however, had left the dance floor and walked towards the front of the building, closer to the car bomb. He did not survive the blast.
Unaware at the time that the blast had killed Gajado, Luke frantically searched for him amongst the chaos outside, stopping to help badly injured Australian, Tom Singer, lifting him to his feet and moving him to safety.
"I said, 'Mate, I don't care both your legs are broken, you're going to get up and we're going to use both of our strengths and get you out of here'," Luke told Reuters.
Seventeen-year-old Singer died one month later in hospital.
A photo of Luke helping severely burnt Singer was on front pages of newspapers globally the day after the bombings and she was nicknamed the "Angel of Bali".
Five months on, Luke was invited to speak on a panel to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair on national television about her opposition to the planned invasion of Iraq in 2003. She expressed the horror she endured by the Bali attack and said the root causes of terrorism needed to be addressed, rather than join then U.S. President George Bush's war in Iraq.
"I wanted to know, well, why do these people hate us so much? What is it that leads people to this kind of disgusting act? And I do think it comes back to the inequalities in our world and also it comes back to war and the history of war in the Middle East and that's what Jemaah Islamiah put forward as their justification for the Bali bombing," Luke said.
Today, twenty years after the deadly bombings, Luke lives in northern New South Wales with her partner of 10 years Kieran, and their two children, Connie and Tristan. Luke is a senior lecturer in Science and Regenerative Agriculture at Southern Cross University and works with farmers and communities on resilience and fighting climate change.
Luke decided to run for federal government in 2022 as a teal independent, after watching her family and community deal with the challenges of climate change as severe flooding ravaged her town, saying she just couldn’t sit and do nothing after she was given a "gift" in surviving the Bali attack.
"The nightmare is that, still 20 years later, Marc's never going to come back," Luke said. "We can't bring those people back, but we can live the most, the best versions of our lives."
(Production: Jill Gralow) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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