A memorial service was held in the tourist district of Kuta on Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly attacks. The survivors and their families stood before a plaque that listed the names of those killed in the bombings.

Bali is welcoming back tourists lost during the pandemic. But the survivors of the bombings still carry the physical and psychological scars from that that October night 20 years ago.

One of them is Thiolina Marpaung, who heads the Isana Dewata Foundation which assists survivors and their families with their day-to-day lives.

Thiolina, 49 years old, was in a car that night with work colleague Dewa Rudita, now 55, heading to an event in Kuta. They were caught in traffic along Legian Road when a car exploded five vehicles in front of them. The blast set fire to their own car, but the two co-workers managed to escape with their lives.

Thiolina now has trouble seeing after shards of glass struck her eyes and still visits a doctor once every two months.

Dewa was burned badly on his left arm and elsewhere, leaving prominent surgical scars. He is so traumatised by the terror attack that he cannot approach the site.

“It’s a miracle that I’m alive,” said Dewa.

The terror attack targeted two nightclubs popular with foreign tourists, taking the lives of 202 people. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in Indonesia’s history, with most of those killed foreign nationals.

Indonesian authorities later arrested senior members of the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Another terror attack occurred in Bali in 2005, killing around 20 people.

The Indonesian government responded to the 2002 Bali attack by adopting a harder line against terrorism. In 2004, the National Police formed an anti-terror unit known as Densus 88. Indonesia established a national counterterrorism agency six years later, and the military formed a special forces unit to combat terrorism in 2019.

The country tightened scrutiny on potential sources of terror funding. This series of measures is starting to bear fruit: There have been no large-scale terror attacks in Indonesia since suicide bombers targeted churches in Java in 2018, leaving over 50 dead or wounded.

But in the two decades since 2002, social media platforms have come into their own as a means of reaching vast numbers of people in an instant. There is now a higher risk of extremism spreading online, experts say.

There were 370 arrests made last year in connection to terrorism, according to the National Police, more than double the 2017 figure.

Little effort is needed to find social media posts calling for the establishment of an Islamist state or even showing how to make weapons. Authorities are engaged in a game of whack-a-mole as they delete one post, only to find more.

Last year, a woman entered National Police headquarters in Jakarta and fired a gun at officers, shocking the nation. Authorities later said that she had made posts on social media swearing allegiance to the Islamic State. Authorities are keeping a close watch for terror plots launched by organisations as well as lone-wolf attacks.

President Joko Widodo is pushing education as a means to combat extremism. Under his administration, the Indonesian International Islamic University opened last year with a mission of promoting moderate Islam. In September, the national counterterrorism agency and the ministry of religious affairs agreed to fight religious extremism through the assistance of Islamic leaders.

Here in Bali, the attacks are becoming the distant past for some. A memorial park was supposed to replace what remains of a nightclub targeted that night, but progress on the government’s plans has been slow.

“The real enemy of eradicating terrorism are the fading memories of attacks,” said Dewa.