Bali Prays to Free Souls Trapped By Bombing

A roasted pig's head ornately decorated with brightly coloured flower petals, piles of rice, fruit and woven palm leaves sat serenely on top of a six-foot wooden frame. Nearby lay the head and skin of a freshly slaughtered buffalo and other flora and fauna, the stench of the raw meat masked by the powerful aroma of burning incense sticks.

On a raised stage behind these elaborate offerings, five Hindu priests and their assistants furiously chanted mantras while ringing bells, flicking holy water over the offerings and blowing into shells to ward off evil spirits.

This was the scene in Bali yesterday at the still-devastated site of the two deadly bombings last month which killed almost 200 people, a place where tens of thousands of traumatised locals staged an elaborate "purification" ceremony to restore the shattered spiritual balance and harmony to their lives and to the island.

Indonesian and foreign government ministers and diplomats, plus a handful of tourists who had defied consular advice to avoid Bali, joined them at the disaster scene, now a shrine for dozens of victims' families, including relatives of six of the British dead.

It was the largest religious ceremony anyone present could recall on Bali, the one large Hindu enclave in the world's most-populous Muslim state.

A senior local community leader, I Bagus Gde Supartti, said there were six main aims of the ceremony, called Tawur Agung Pamarisudha Karipubhaya. These included freeing the victims' souls - which the Balinese believe were trapped between earth and heaven until yesterday - blessing the wounded, and forgiving the perpetrators. "The most important aim is to restore the microcosmic and macrocosmic balance between the earth, atmosphere and heavens," he said.

The senior government minister present, the coordinating welfare minister, Jusuf Kalla, said yesterday that the ceremony marked the end of the mourning period and the right moment to move on.

"This tragedy is indeed a major catastrophe, but we don't want to keep crying," he said. "Bali should be the temple that radiates light."

"We have never had such a large ceremony because we have never experienced such a tragedy," said Nengah Cipta, one of the organisers.

Because of the large numbers who wanted to attend, an exact copy of the proceedings was held about a mile away on the white sand of Kuta beach.

The world-famous surfers' paradise, that had been packed each day with thousands of tourists until the bombing, was eerily deserted save for the worshippers, who had swapped their beach gear for immaculate traditional costumes.

Most of the men wore white shirts or jackets, brightly coloured sarongs and sashes, and white scarves around their heads, while the women donned coloured lace shirts, corsets and sarongs. Many wore fragrant frangipani flowers in their hair.

Several hundred people had swapped their customary garments for special commemorative T-shirts which were distributed for free. Emblazoned in big letters on the front was Bali cinta damai, with the English translation, 'Bali loves peace' was on the back.

Smaller ceremonies, complete with holy water collected and blessed at the bomb site, were held in virtually every village as the island came to a standstill for two hours.

After the high priests had had made their offerings, including slaughtering a piglet, duck and hen, and restored the disrupted spiritual balance, the main ceremonies climaxed in a 15-minute long prayer.

The groundswell of tens of thousands of chanting people, sitting cross-legged with their palms pressed together above their heads, resonated so movingly and powerfully across the site that one or two people seemed to enter a trance.

Proceedings at the bombsite closed with temple officials burying some of the animals in the ground next to the crater where the main bomb had been placed in a minibus. The largest, a buffalo, was placed at the bottom and a cow, goat, dog, piglet, goose, duck and hen were laid on top.

At Kuta beach, priests took the same animals, albeit living versions dressed in white cloth and yellow sashes, out to sea in a fleet of pink outrigger fishing boats before drowning them in an offering to Baruna, the Balinese god of the sea.

Balinese Hindus also held small purification rituals at the former World Trade Centre in New York and also in London, Sydney and Toronto.

Most of the international schools in Jakarta closed yesterday after western embassies received "specific and credible information" of a terrorist threat. One western diplomat said they would stay closed until the threat "had been dealt with".