Indonesia starts looking for a tourist who practiced naked meditation at a Hindu shrine

Authorities on Bali, a tourist destination in Indonesia, said on Tuesday that they are looking for a foreign person who was seen in a widely circulated video meditating nude at a Hindu temple. Following a slew of events, including disregard for the culture of the mostly Hindu island, the palm-fringed destination has promised to tighten down on unruly travelers.

After Balinese influencer Ni Luh Djelantik uploaded the video several times between Saturday and Sunday, garnering hundreds of thousands of views, the case received extensive attention on the Hindu island. In a statement issued to AFP on Tuesday, Tedy Riyandi, the director of immigration, said, “We are still conducting investigations regarding this incident.”

Authorities have identified the foreign individual, but while the search is ongoing, neither his identity nor his country of origin have been made public. The foreigner’s social media accounts are now being contacted by the Immigration Office, but no answer has been received as of yet, according to Riyandi.

He said that Bali police were working together to coordinate the hunt for the foreign individual as they attempted to determine when and where it occurred.

Tourist-dependent Bali draws millions of international tourists each year, but since the island reopened during the Covid-19 outbreak, several have been deported for obscene behavior in a number of high-profile incidents. A Danish lady was deported from Bali by immigration in June after she was caught on camera flashing people while operating a motorcycle.

In April, a Russian lady who had posted a picture of herself in a naked state in front of a holy tree had also been expelled. Following pressure from the island’s immigration office, the local administration released a guide for travelers interested in visiting Bali in June.