Bomb survivor fights terror with humanity
A survivor of the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta is confronting the evil that stole his friends’ lives 10 years ago with a powerful lesson of humanity.
Sudirman Thalib remembers slumping to the blackened ground that day, thinking: “I’m going to die here”.
He was 22, and had only been working as a security guard outside the fortified embassy for three months.
The eldest of five boys from Bima, in a remote Indonesian region, he had happily moved to Jakarta to better his family’s life.
At 10.15am on September 9, 2004, he was chatting to his colleagues at the front entrance when they took the full impact of a car bomb targeted at the Australians inside.
“I was not far from the car, so my body went flying to the ground,” Sudirman says.
“There was so much smoke and I saw the leaves falling from the trees.
“Then nothing, then someone shouting `bomb, bomb, bomb’.
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“I saw the people beside me had died, and felt so sad, and I remember thinking, `I’m going to die here’.”
The bomb killed 10 people, all Indonesian, including two embassy staff.
It maimed more than 200 others, people collecting visas, and workers in the bustling business area.
Two years on from the 2002 bomb that killed 202 people in Bali, the same terror group, Jemaah Islamiah, claimed responsibility.
Today, Sudirman still needs medication daily for brain nerve damage the blast inflicted.
Terror left its scars on his hands, which have limited mobility, and his left eye was so damaged by shrapnel it was removed more recently.
Yet Sudirman forgives the attackers, and sympathises with young men who are still being lured to “the wrong path”.
“It’s amazing to be sitting here,” he says, on the blast’s 10th anniversary.
“I had a terrible experience but I’m here to tell people not to give up.”
He also survived, he says, to challenge the ideas of radicals.
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In his role as an ambassador for Peace Alliance Indonesia (AIDA) he sees people meet face-to-face and witness the damage terror has done to fellow Muslims and Indonesians.
He now counts as a friend Ali Fauzi, brother of executed Bali bombers Amrozi and Ali Ghufron.
“When he heard my experience, he cried,” Sudirman says.
“It took him a long time to calm himself and he said, `I’m really sorry for that’.
“It’s no problem for me, I forgive him, and we’re looking to the future, not to the past.”
He has also met at-risk teens, using photos of his mates at the embassy, where he now works in administration, as a useful tool.
“I change people’s minds,” he says.
“Many people in the villages have never actually met Westerners.
“I explain to them that I work with Westerners, with Australians, who are very respectful to me and our religion.”
Supported by the embassy, Sudirman is also studying for a degree to teach English.
He married in 2007. Son Zaky is 5, and baby daughter Aida takes her name from the peace group he lobbies for, because he says, an end to terror is his sincerest wish.
“If you shoot someone, someone will just try to shoot you back,” he says.
“Humanity is more powerful than using guns.”
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