Indonesia has detained 28 “beach boys” accused of selling sex to female tourists on Bali after a documentary on the resort’s “gigolos” hit the Internet, an official said yesterday.
The round-up of Bali’s so-called “cowboys” began as tourism officials fretted over the impact of the film on the holiday island’s image as a family destination.
“We’ve rounded up 28 men we suspect might be gigolos. They’re young, fit-looking and tanned, mostly surfer beach boys,” said I Gusti Ngurah Tresna, the chief of security on Bali’s main Kuta beach.
PHOTO: AFP
“We’re still questioning them. If we have good reason to suspect they may be involved in shady activities we’ll hand them over to the police,” he said, adding that the raids were ongoing.
The documentary Cowboys in Paradise by Singapore-based writer and director Amit Virmani was released at a film festival in South Korea last week.
Segments of the film, which contains candid interviews with “beach boys” and the foreign women who fall for them, have gone viral on the Internet after appearing on YouTube.
Bali Tourism Board chief Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya said the “cowboys” had been fixtures on Bali’s tourist beaches for some time but had not attracted much attention until now.
“The film is over the top and only focuses on this group of people on the beach, but that’s not what Bali is about. If the film is shown to the world, Bali’s image will be tarnished,” he said.
“I hope the authorities will get rid of these cowboys because they’re of no benefit to us,” he said.”
Tresna said the documentary ran counter to the authorities’ preferred image of Bali as a world-class destination combining unique Hindu culture and history with famous beaches and surfing spots.
“All this while we’ve been selling our beautiful waves, sunsets, turtles, culture and nature conservation, and suddenly now we’re seen to be selling gigolos? Such films are really harmful to our image,” he said.
The beach police chief could not explain what charges the beach boys could face and admitted it would be hard to prove they were selling sex.
“We’re always on the beach so we can guess which beach boy may be taking advantage of foreign women,” he said.
Similar arrests had been made in the past but the suspects had been released “with a stern warning,” he said.
“They will approach foreign female tourists, especially Japanese, on the beach, befriend them and the women will pay for their company and food during their stay here. Sex may be involved,” he said.
“It’s like prostitution, which is hard to prove because the foreign women may be willing partners, too,” he said.
Filmmaker Virmani told the twitchfilm.net Web site that the men “have no reason to be ashamed and they know it.”
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS