Letter from Bali
BY RAFAEL D. FRANKEL, UPI Correspondent
Kuta, Indonesia—The government has arrested 17 suspects in the bombing. Peace concerts with famous musicians were held. And the wreckage of the Sari and Pati clubs on the main strip here was cleared away.
And yet still, the island is empty.
The Balinese have done just about everything to come to terms with and move on from last year’s Oct. 12 bombings which killed 193 people here, mostly tourists, including performing the Hindu cleansing festival.
And while spiritually they no longer dwell on the extreme violence which was brought to their tropical garden of Eden more than three months ago, business is so bad that every day life has turned into a struggle.
“I told my children they have to eat dried noodles now for breakfast,” said Martin Sitapu, 46, and the owner of an internet café and travel agency. “They used to have fresh bread and jam every morning.”
Like most businesses in Bali these days, Sitapu’s is on the verge of collapse. Businesses is down over ninety percent for him, and bankruptcy is only a year away barring a major pick-up.
As resourceful as the U.S. economy proved to be following the 9/11 attacks, Bali’s seems just that fragile following its own hell come to pass. Sixty-seven percent of its GDP in 2001 came from tourism.
Despite major discounts being offered by hotels in Bali, Indonesia Tourism Minister I Gede Ardika said Jan. 13 that Indonesia is projecting a maximum of 4.5 million tourists in 2003. That figure was revised downward by one million after the Bali bombings, and accounts for a precipitous drop in tourists visiting Bali which would have been around 1.5 million.
On the island, waiters at cafes sit and play cards amongst empty rooms of set tables and slowly rotating fans. And proprietors look crushed when tourists walk out of their shops without making a purchase. Even pricing sarongs at $1.10, one shopkeeper in Lovina beach on Bali’s northern coast told UPI she had not sold anything in five days.
Though the exodus of tourists in the days following the bombings was well documented, there is now an daily exodus of other sorts crushing Bali all the same.
Thousands of people who came from Java and across other parts of the Indonesian archipelago, to work in the once booming Balinese economy are packing up and going home.
“Bali is quiet now, and many people are sad,” said Yoyo Fredricko, 25, who owns the Toke’Surf Shop. “We are also very angry, really hate the terrorists.”
“Hate” would not have found its way into the Balinese vernacular before the bombings. But such is the reality of post-Oct. 12 Bali where one of the fastest selling items on popular Poppies Gang (street) is a t-shirt with two words in big, black, bold, print: “(Expletive) Terrorists!”
Rather than being a sharp wound where the pain was quick and the healing time manageable, the damage inflicted to Bali is beginning to resemble a slowly progressing disease with an uncertain prognosis.
The prospect of War with Iraq is not helping matters. After the bombings, the conventional wisdom in Bali was that business would be back to normal in three to four months. But with another international crisis looming, and a slew of Western governments issuing travel warnings to Southeast Asia, even the most hopeful are now sullen.
“Bali is safe, but maybe your people are afraid?” Sitapu said. “I don’t understand, and it’s very difficult because now the fear [of war] is in all our hearts.”
Despite all the gloom, the ingredients for a recovery are all here: an unambiguously friendly people, a stunning tropical setting, and a name that was once, and may well be again, synonymous with paradise.
The surfing community of the Pacific region was perhaps the hardest hit by the bombings, and are among the first to be coming back to Bali.
Australia in particular took the brunt of the blow, and that made it particularly difficult for Simon Ferguson, 28, from New Castle, Australia to come to Bali. “I always wanted to come here. Bombs don’t wreck reefs,” said Ferguson, who booked tickets to Bali the day before the bombings with his girlfriend. He wound up coming alone, and has met only three other Australians on the island which once served as the country’s back yard.
Gung-ho surfing attitude aside, Ferguson said it was not easy being here, and that he broke down in tears laying flowers at the wreckage of the Sari Club on Australia’s National Day.
“But the people are so friendly here and nobody is worried at all. I feel safer here than I do at home because the people look after you like you would a guest in your own house,” he said.
The Indonesian government is also optimistic about Bali’s long-term prospects. "Indications show that we are on the right track to recovery," Minister Ardika said. "By the end of 2003, the government of Indonesia hopes that the tourism industry would return to normal and be ready to expand."
"We want [tourists] to see for themselves that the perception that Bali is unsafe is not true. Bali is safe and is still the island of peace. Conditions have normalized," he said.
Perhaps he is right. Despite partying at the Sari club just three days before it was destroyed, and despite one of his friends dying there, Sean Conley, 25, from Port Angeles, Washington, decided to return to Bali on his way back to the United States after traveling around Asia and the Pacific for five months.
“It actually seems better than before. There’s less people, it’s more quiet,” Conley said. “I’ll be back for sure.”
©2005 United Press International
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Sunday, December 08, 2002
Thai AIDS pill raises hopes of poor, concern of skeptics
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent, 12/8/2002
BANGPAKONG, Thailand - Like many Thais with AIDS, Thares Sangsakul could not afford the antiretroviral drugs that might keep the disease in check. So after suffering from severe wasting and skin lesions, among other symptoms, he put his faith in a pill touted by its inventor as a possible cure.
Since he started taking the V-1 Immunitor three years ago, Sangsakul said, his life has turned around: He has regained 45 pounds, his lesions are mostly gone, and he has returned to work full time.
''I could not really explain about V-1,'' said Sangsakul, 33. ''But I know people should try it because it helps.''
While Sangsakul and thousands of others believe the pill is a lifesaver, health officials insist that there is no scientific evidence to prove it. They say inventors and distributors of the pill, which is officially registered as a food supplement, are taking advantage of the most hopeless of people in a quest for fame and wealth.
Despite the warnings, word of the pill's reported benefits is spreading, including to other countries. Perhaps most perplexing to skeptics of claims made for the substance is the new type of patient taking it: those who can afford antiretroviral treatment.
''It's all a charlatan exercise,'' said Dr. Chris Duncombe, the senior physician for a program headed by the Thai Red Cross that cares for 1,300 AIDS patients. ''The scientific evidence presented by the investigators is not at all sound. It's just anecdotal, single-case examples of many possible things - placebo, emotional, anything.''
A pharmacist named Vichai Jirathitikal invented V-1 and began distributing it to a few dozen AIDS patients three years ago. Users now number more than 60,000 in Thailand and more than 4,000 in 50 other countries, according to Dr. Aldar Bourinbaiar, a Mongolian-born former California resident who has worked closely with Jirathitikal for the past two years.
Every day, Jirathitikal says, 10 to 20 people find their way to his clinic, tucked away in an inconspicuous industrial park an hour east of Bangkok.
''They don't have a choice because they are going to die,'' he said in a recent interview. The standard drug cocktail used throughout the world is too expensive for them, he said.
He insists that toxicology tests on animals prove V-1 is safe, and asserted that 95 percent of those who take V-1 show some improvement.
''The problem is the big [pharmaceutical] companies and health institutes don't understand the HIV virus so well, and they refuse to look at our documented studies, which show our patients, including children, getting much better.''
Jirathitikal frames his program as a people-against-the-establishment drama, but the reality is that many AIDS patients in Thailand do have a choice now that the price of antiretroviral therapy in the country has fallen dramatically in the last year - to around $28 per month. The Bangkapong clinic charges $21 a month for V-1.
The scrutiny of the drug comes at a pivotal time in Thailand's battle against AIDS. Condom-distribution programs have slowed the of HIV growth, but the virus is still proliferating because of casual attitudes about prostitution and increasing intravenous drug use, health officials say.
According to a Nov. 26 United Nations report, an estimated 675,000 Thais have HIV or AIDS - significantly fewer than the estimated peak of 800,000 in 1997. A disproportionate number of Thailand's AIDS patients are poor, even when compared with the annual per capita income of $2,000.
It is with the poor that V-1 has its roots. The pill gained popularity last year, with five high-profile giveaways to anyone with an HIV-positive blood test. The largest of the giveaways, at a stadium in Bangkok, drew upwards of 20,000 people and helped fuel the near-hysteria about the supposed merits of the pill.
As a result, the government stepped in and halted the giveaways and has tried to discredit V-1, saying tests by Thailand's Food and Drug Administration show no conclusive evidence it helps those with HIV and AIDS.
V-1 has become a political hot potato, so much so that the head of Thailand's FDA recently ordered government employees not to speak about the pill to the news media. Officials from the FDA, Ministry of Health, and Medical Sciences Department all refused to comment for this story.
Further alarming health officials, V-1 has shown up in China, parts of Africa, and even in small numbers in Europe and the United States. How is not clear, although Bourinbaiar said HIV-positive tourists buy it in Thailand and take it home.
The secrecy in which the ingredients of V-1 are cloaked also breeds skepticism, since secrecy is a characteristic of quack remedies, exempting them from scientific study. Jirathitikal said it contains ''inactivated HIV antigens,'' but will give no further description.
He said that unlike the majority of experimental AIDS medicines, which seek to boost antibodies, V-1 attempts to reverse the decline in CD4 blood cells, which protect the body against infection.
A recent AIDS Day celebration at his clinic in Bangpakong showed what the government is up against: Three dozen people turned out to sing the praises of V-1, including the Thai television actress Yoko Takano, whose brother developed AIDS three years ago.
After going on antiretroviral medication, he became very ill and ''was close to death,'' Takano said.
''He switched to V-1, and now he is healthy. Why should he go back'' to antiretrovirals, she asked.
© 2002 Globe Newspaper Company
BANGPAKONG, Thailand - Like many Thais with AIDS, Thares Sangsakul could not afford the antiretroviral drugs that might keep the disease in check. So after suffering from severe wasting and skin lesions, among other symptoms, he put his faith in a pill touted by its inventor as a possible cure.
Since he started taking the V-1 Immunitor three years ago, Sangsakul said, his life has turned around: He has regained 45 pounds, his lesions are mostly gone, and he has returned to work full time.
''I could not really explain about V-1,'' said Sangsakul, 33. ''But I know people should try it because it helps.''
While Sangsakul and thousands of others believe the pill is a lifesaver, health officials insist that there is no scientific evidence to prove it. They say inventors and distributors of the pill, which is officially registered as a food supplement, are taking advantage of the most hopeless of people in a quest for fame and wealth.
Despite the warnings, word of the pill's reported benefits is spreading, including to other countries. Perhaps most perplexing to skeptics of claims made for the substance is the new type of patient taking it: those who can afford antiretroviral treatment.
''It's all a charlatan exercise,'' said Dr. Chris Duncombe, the senior physician for a program headed by the Thai Red Cross that cares for 1,300 AIDS patients. ''The scientific evidence presented by the investigators is not at all sound. It's just anecdotal, single-case examples of many possible things - placebo, emotional, anything.''
A pharmacist named Vichai Jirathitikal invented V-1 and began distributing it to a few dozen AIDS patients three years ago. Users now number more than 60,000 in Thailand and more than 4,000 in 50 other countries, according to Dr. Aldar Bourinbaiar, a Mongolian-born former California resident who has worked closely with Jirathitikal for the past two years.
Every day, Jirathitikal says, 10 to 20 people find their way to his clinic, tucked away in an inconspicuous industrial park an hour east of Bangkok.
''They don't have a choice because they are going to die,'' he said in a recent interview. The standard drug cocktail used throughout the world is too expensive for them, he said.
He insists that toxicology tests on animals prove V-1 is safe, and asserted that 95 percent of those who take V-1 show some improvement.
''The problem is the big [pharmaceutical] companies and health institutes don't understand the HIV virus so well, and they refuse to look at our documented studies, which show our patients, including children, getting much better.''
Jirathitikal frames his program as a people-against-the-establishment drama, but the reality is that many AIDS patients in Thailand do have a choice now that the price of antiretroviral therapy in the country has fallen dramatically in the last year - to around $28 per month. The Bangkapong clinic charges $21 a month for V-1.
The scrutiny of the drug comes at a pivotal time in Thailand's battle against AIDS. Condom-distribution programs have slowed the of HIV growth, but the virus is still proliferating because of casual attitudes about prostitution and increasing intravenous drug use, health officials say.
According to a Nov. 26 United Nations report, an estimated 675,000 Thais have HIV or AIDS - significantly fewer than the estimated peak of 800,000 in 1997. A disproportionate number of Thailand's AIDS patients are poor, even when compared with the annual per capita income of $2,000.
It is with the poor that V-1 has its roots. The pill gained popularity last year, with five high-profile giveaways to anyone with an HIV-positive blood test. The largest of the giveaways, at a stadium in Bangkok, drew upwards of 20,000 people and helped fuel the near-hysteria about the supposed merits of the pill.
As a result, the government stepped in and halted the giveaways and has tried to discredit V-1, saying tests by Thailand's Food and Drug Administration show no conclusive evidence it helps those with HIV and AIDS.
V-1 has become a political hot potato, so much so that the head of Thailand's FDA recently ordered government employees not to speak about the pill to the news media. Officials from the FDA, Ministry of Health, and Medical Sciences Department all refused to comment for this story.
Further alarming health officials, V-1 has shown up in China, parts of Africa, and even in small numbers in Europe and the United States. How is not clear, although Bourinbaiar said HIV-positive tourists buy it in Thailand and take it home.
The secrecy in which the ingredients of V-1 are cloaked also breeds skepticism, since secrecy is a characteristic of quack remedies, exempting them from scientific study. Jirathitikal said it contains ''inactivated HIV antigens,'' but will give no further description.
He said that unlike the majority of experimental AIDS medicines, which seek to boost antibodies, V-1 attempts to reverse the decline in CD4 blood cells, which protect the body against infection.
A recent AIDS Day celebration at his clinic in Bangpakong showed what the government is up against: Three dozen people turned out to sing the praises of V-1, including the Thai television actress Yoko Takano, whose brother developed AIDS three years ago.
After going on antiretroviral medication, he became very ill and ''was close to death,'' Takano said.
''He switched to V-1, and now he is healthy. Why should he go back'' to antiretrovirals, she asked.
© 2002 Globe Newspaper Company