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.”
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS