JAKARTA: Indonesia will conduct an audit to reform tourism on the tropical island of Bali to improve tourism quality and preserve local culture and jobs, a senior minister said on Friday.
About 200,000 foreigners currently live in Bali and have created problems such as crime, over-development and competition for employment, Luhut Pandjaitan, senior minister overseeing tourism said on his Instagram page.
“Foreign tourists who bring problem here, such as narcotics, gangs, and other issues, we can deport them from Indonesia, from Bali, and we don’t want them to enter Bali anymore,” he said, speaking in English in a video clip.
Foreign arrivals in Bali have surged since the island reopened after COVID-19, and videos of misbehaving tourists often go viral, angering local residents and sparking harsh responses from social media users in Indonesia.
Data from Indonesia’s statistics bureau shows that 2.9 million foreign visitors entered the island through Bali airport in the first half of this year, accounting for 65 percent of Indonesia’s total foreign arrivals by air for the period.
Tourism Minister Sandiaga Uno said earlier this month that the government wants to avoid “a situation like Barcelona, where tourists became public enemies,” national news agency Antara reported.
Luhut said the government will also tackle trash problems on the island, improve infrastructure and prevent further over-development.
“We don’t want to see paddy fields become a villa or become a nude club,” he said. “For us, quality is more important than numbers.”
Public nudity is illegal in Indonesia and there are no strip clubs in Bali, although there are nightclubs and discos that feature in-house dancers.
The government will soon announce a policy plan for reforming Bali’s tourism, Luhut said.
Indonesia to reform tourism on tropical island Bali, senior minister says
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Indonesia to reform tourism on tropical island Bali, senior minister says
- About 200,000 foreigners currently live in Bali and have created problems such as crime, over-development and competition for employment
- Foreign arrivals in Bali have surged since the island reopened after COVID-19, and videos of misbehaving tourists often go viral, angering local residents
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
