Bali is a predominantly Hindu island with more than 80 per cent of its population practising Hinduism. Balinese people who saw the video found it outrageous and promptly reacted on social media. Photograph:(Twitter)
Authorities of a Bali-based resort in Indonesia are reportedly on the hunt for a foreign national who was seen meditating naked at a sacred Hindu shrine in a viral video. This is not a lone incident to come out of the island nation. In the past, a slew of such incidents have taken place where tourists were seen or caught disrespecting religious places.
This particular case came to light when a Balinese influencer Ni Luh Djelantik reposted a video of a naked man meditating at a Hindu shrine, gaining hundreds of thousands of views.
Jewish human rights organisation Simon Wiesenthal Center has demanded that Prime Video should stop ‘monetizing’ Nitesh Tiwari’s Bawaal.
Bawaal is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Nitesh Tiwari’s Bawaal, starring Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan, has landed in controversy internationally as the Jewish human rights body Simon Wiesenthal Center has objected to the way film has conflated the tragedy in the narrative. The film’s lead characters travel to World War 2 sites and visit a gas chamber in Auschwitz. They are shown inside a gas chamber in a dream-like sequence with visuals where they are struggling to breathe. In one scene, Janhvi’s character Nisha says, “We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?” when speaking about human greed. And in another scene, the character is heard saying, “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz” implying that every relationship has its struggles.
Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Jewish human rights organisation that defends the safety of Jews worldwide and calls out anti-Semitism and hate. The organisation also works towards preserving the memory of those who were killed during the Holocaust. SWC Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action, Rabbi Abraham Cooper has asked Amazon to “stop monetising” Bawaal with immediate effect and called the film a “banal trivialisation of the suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.”
He said, “Auschwitz is not a metaphor. It is the quintessential example of Man’s capacity for Evil.” The statement further read, “By having the protagonist in this movie declare that ‘Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz,’ Nitesh Tiwari, trivializes and demeans the memory of 6 million murdered Jews and millions of others who suffered at the hands of Hitler’s genocidal regime.”
All Baghdad embassy staff were safe, the Swedish foreign ministry press office said in a statement, condemning the attack and highlighting the need for Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions
Protesters clash with security forces members as they gather near the Swedish embassy in Baghdad hours after the embassy was stormed and set on fire ahead of an expected Quran burning in Stockholm, in Baghdad, Iraq.
Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad in the early hours of Thursday morning, scaling its walls and setting it on fire in protest against the expected burning of a Quran in Sweden.
All Baghdad embassy staff were safe, the Swedish foreign ministry press office said in a statement, condemning the attack and highlighting the need for Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions.
Thursday’s demonstration was called by supporters of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Sadr to protest the second planned Quran burning in Sweden in weeks, according to posts in a popular Telegram group linked the influential cleric and other pro-Sadr media.
Sadr, one of Iraq’s most powerful figures, commands hundreds of thousands of followers whom he has at times called to the streets, including last summer when they occupied Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone and engaged in deadly clashes.
Swedish news agency TT reported on Wednesday that Swedish police granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday.
The application says the applicant seeks to burn the Quran and the Iraqi flag, TT reported.
A series of videos posted to the Telegram group, One Baghdad, showed people gathering around the embassy around 1 a.m. on Thursday (2200 GMT on Wednesday) chanting pro-Sadr slogans and storming the embassy complex around an hour later.
“Yes, yes to the Quran,” protesters chanted.
Videos later showed smoke rising from a building in the embassy complex and protesters standing on its roof. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos.
Quran protests
Iraq’s foreign ministry also condemned the incident and said in a statement the Iraqi government had instructed security forces to carry out a swift investigation, identify perpetrators and hold them to account.
By dawn on Thursday, security forces had deployed inside the embassy and smoke rose from the building as fire-fighters extinguished stubborn embers, according to Reuters witnesses.
Most protesters had withdrawn, with a few dozen milling around outside the embassy.
Late last month, Sadr called for protests against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador after the Quran burning in Stockholm by an Iraqi man.
Swedish police charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God.
Two major protests took place outside of the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in the aftermath of that Quran burning, with protesters breaching the embassy grounds on one occasion.
The governments of several Muslim countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco issued protests about the incident, with Iraq seeking the man’s extradition to face trial in the country.
