World News | Bali Authorities Launch Manhunt for Foreigner Who Meditated Naked at Hindu Temple
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Authorities in Bali have launched a manhunt for a foreigner who was seen meditating naked at a Hindu temple in the Indonesian tourist hotspot in a viral video that has outraged the local people, according to a media report.
Singapore, Oct 4 (PTI) Authorities in Bali have launched a manhunt for a foreigner who was seen meditating naked at a Hindu temple in the Indonesian tourist hotspot in a viral video that has outraged the local people, according to a media report.
Though the original Instagram account, in which the video was initially shared, has been emptied, a new account has started sharing spoofs of the controversial footage, The Bali Sun news website reported on Tuesday.
The original video of the man meditating at the temple has been removed, but not before netizens took screen recordings and the footage went viral, it said.
The website identified the man as Julian Zietlow, a "Caucasian". His account with 376,000 followers now only has one post on it.
Officials from Bali's Department of Immigration are now trying to track down the man in the video.
According to the report, Denpasar Immigration Office chief Tedy Riyandi told reporters on Monday that they are "coordinating with the Bali Police's Intelligence and Security Directorate” to track down the man.
“We are trying to find the whereabouts of the foreigner and investigate the time and (exact) place of the indecent (incident),” he said.
Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Muslim-dominated Indonesia, with 86.9 per cent of the population practising Hinduism.
The controversial footage first emerged online over the weekend and caught the attention of social justice advocate and Balinese entrepreneur Ni Luh Djelantik.
Djelantik and her community of online supporters have been on a mission to raise awareness of the rising number of foreigners behaving badly in Bali for the last year, according to the report.
Indonesia has some of the strictest online defamation laws in the world. Anyone caught sharing or possessing content that violates these online defamation laws or could be considered pornographic could face criminal charges, the report said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)