JAKARTA: Indonesia has arrested a Swiss man accused of using expletives to denigrate a Hindu religious holiday observed on the tourist island of Bali, a police official said.<\/p>\n
Luzian Andrin Zgraggen risks up to five years in prison on hate speech charges, Bali police spokesman Ariasandy said in a statement late on Sunday (Mar 22) that did not specify the suspect’s age.<\/p>\n
Bali’s Day of Silence or “Nyepi” was celebrated on Thursday and requires locals and tourists on the Hindu-majority island to stay at home for 24 hours for self-reflection.<\/p>\n
Work, travel, entertainment and even electricity use are discouraged.<\/p>\n
Zgraggen was arrested on Saturday after he was reported to police over an Instagram post, said Ariasandy, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.<\/p>\n
In the post, he repeatedly used the “f” word to refer to the holiday.<\/p>\n
The tourist stands accused of spreading hate speech online, an offence which under Indonesia’s new criminal code can land him as many as five years in prison.<\/p>\n
Ariasandy said police would seize Zgraggen’s iPhone and question witnesses.<\/p>\n
Bali attracts millions of foreign visitors each year but has seen recent high-profile cases of misbehaving tourists.<\/p>\n
Last week, authorities on the island arrested two French nationals and an Italian on accusations of producing and distributing pornography, which is forbidden in the Muslim-majority country, which officially recognises six religions as well as indigenous beliefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JAKARTA: Indonesia has arrested a Swiss man accused of using expletives to denigrate a Hindu religious holiday observed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[4553,21770,21892,9516,41,17],"class_list":["post-37188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-arrest","tag-bali","tag-hate-speech","tag-indonesia","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116279169830330797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}