Bali writers conference to be held despite terrorist threats

A Bali writers conference inspired by the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island will go on as scheduled Thursday amid stepped-up security including bomb-sniffing dogs and undercover police following last weekend's attacks.

Janet de Neefe, the organizer of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, said only three of the 100 authors have canceled because of Saturday's bombing in Bali that killed 22 people and injured over 100.

The conference will run through Oct. 11 in the hill town of Ubud, about an hour from the site of Saturday's triple-suicide attack. "We're still going ahead, of course. We never wanted to stop the festival," said de Neefe, the 46-year-old Australian who wrote "Fragrant Rice," a book about Balinese cuisine.

"Certainly, I don't understand what motivates people to do such atrocious things," she said. "It makes me more convinced to do this. I refuse to allow these people to rule our lives."

The 2002 attacks involved two near simultaneous explosions in a nightclub district that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. Thirty-three alleged operatives with the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network have been convicted so far. Three have been sentenced to death, reports the AP. I.L.