Information obtained from Time, ABC news . Apologies for not bothering to quote, wrote it in a rush. What Happened? This is the worst terrorist attack they have experienced in a decade. The first site of attack is in Surabaya, the second largest city in Indonesia. It started with a wave of suicide bombings on last Sunday and Monday. Bomb suicide attacks were done on three churches right before their Sunday service. Luckily, not all of the bombs planted successfully detonated. There were more bombings done on Monday, one of them at Surabaya’s Police HQ. The point of interest of this attack was that these two attacks, as well as one supposedly foiled attack were all done by families with young children. Another point of interest, is that they came on the eve of Ramadan, which is the holy period for Islam. However, extremist groups oddly consider attacks during this period to be particularly holy. What Do The Police Know? The National Chief Police initially suspected that the families involved in the bombings had returned from Syria, where lots of Indonesians traveled to to join the ISIS, but this suspicion was clarified to be false. He added, however, that all three families involved in the separate attacks were all friends. Note that ISIS has claimed the church attacks. Analysts are saying this is the first time adults are bringing their young children into the attacks as well, but they do not think this is the last. They suggest that one reason why attackers chose to involve children is to reduce suspicion, as extremist groups usually only recruit men for suicide missions. Now that childrens are being used, families are less likely to be checked by security officials. This might be due to the parents thinking they would go to heaven for these “holy” acts, and wanted to take their children with them. Indonesian prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for the alleged spiritual leader of the group said to be responsible for the Surabaya bombings. Aman, said leader, set up the JAD in 2014 allegedly to bring together the Indonesian supporters of the Islamic State. He was also said to be responsible for a previous 2016 bombing in Jakarta, and other bombings in East Java. My Own Two Cents Now take this by a grain of salt, but there is a very worrying issue regarding this attack: the lack of news coverage internationally. But before I talk about that, I’d like to state my own opinion. There is a large group of ignorant fools around the world who blame the religion for these attacks. I personally think this is a flawed belief, as I’ve had many Muslim teachers explain to me that the ideology held by these extremist groups was flawed, and that Islam was never a violent religion. I’ve never supported their teachings, but I know for sure, no religion would deliberately support violence. Religions are created to unite people of different backgrounds under the same belief. If a religion as large as Islam were to fully promote violence, more than half of the world would be dead right now. However, I cannot say for them, as I am neither Muslim, nor have I learnt of their teachings before. All I’d like to say is, don’t blame the religion, but blame the people who twist them. Now, on to news coverage. I’m very sad to see that barely anyone knows this issue. I didn’t even know about this issue until a few days after the bombings. What’s wrong with this issue, is it too small to cover? Over twenty casualties, a number of coordinated terrorist attacks, a disturbing use of children, what more do you need? When Paris was attacked, people all over the world was talking about it. Why isn’t the media placing a higher priority on coverage for this issue? I get that the terrorist groups want the attention, they want the media to look at them and fear them. But isn’t there a way to cover this issue, and not cower in fear? I’m very fortunate to not be in my country when these attacks happened, but as a member of this country, I’m devastated that the world doesn’t seem to care about my country’s issues.
I see, that is horrible. Thank you for taking the time to inform us though, the lack of news coverage doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
I'm just annoyed. The world's literally covering everything that's not as important, like the royal wedding, or some actress divorcing. If the attack happened on anywhere more "important", like America or Europe, this would be in the news in a snap. But no, sorry for being just an overpopulated country in SEA ig.
Of course, did you know? Apparently lots of people got jailed for sending out bomb hoaxes through Whatsapp chainmail. ?
The US often times doesn’t cover attacks outside its own country, sadly many stories go unmentioned at all. Not sure how outside the country handles stories. All large disasters or terrorism topics deserve some form of attention but often get neglected.
I can't blame the US to not report this as they have constraints when it comes to newspapers and TV form of outlet, but I'm surprised that it was reported, but no one noticed. I have not seen any social media discussing it, but I have seen online news reports regarding it. So either.. 1. No one reads the online news, ever 2. Someone has read it, but decided it wasn't important enough to talk about it. And I'd say two is right, sadly.