“Bali, you are my greatest inspiration, my muse. I owe you my choice of art as a craft, it was our inspiring encounter when I was only 16 years old that awakened me to this beautiful sacrifice.” she wrote to social media, accompanied by a video of one of her performances.
TPI Denpasar Immigration Office said they had “summoned the person concerned” last month, over reports that she was performing traditional dance classes. The office told local media, she had been “very co-operative.”
The Instagram account @allegra.ceccarelli has since been deleted.
The KITAS investor visa - colloquially known as the ‘nomad visa’ - allows foreign visitors to stay in Indonesia for a fixed period. Holders of the investor visa can conduct certain types or work, such as online marketing or business negotiations or work remotely for offshore companies.
They cannot, however, work for local businesses, perform, or teach classes such as yoga or surfing.
Visitors found to breach the strict visa terms are liable to be deported.
“She said that she taught the dance not at a particular place but in an open environment such as by the beach. The participants are only two and three people,” the Immigration Office’s intelligence and enforcement chief Iqbal Rifai told Coconuts Bali.
Ceccarelli is a graduate of Bali’s Indonesian University of Arts and had also studied in Brazil.
This is the latest incident in which the TPI has prosecuted visitors for incidents exposed on social media. This week Australian national Martia Daniell was deported after being identified in a viral video, riding a moped without a helmet.
Daniell was deported, according to the Daily Mail Australia, only after the video began circulating on social media.
Bali Tourism Board chairman Ida Bagus Agung Partha Adnyana says that the island is working on a campaign to build awareness among foreign visitors and educate tourists on how to behave in Bali.
A new guide of six ‘common sense rules’ were published last month warning travellers to be more mindful of cultural sensitivities and not to “post offensive, vulgar pictures to social media”.
Indonesia and Bali strict ITE laws which mean that online content is policed with strict fines for defamation or “violation of morality”.
However the reality is that individual cases are rarely prosecuted unless they reach a broad public audience.
Petra Mahy of Monash University recently published a paper, titled Influencing the Influencers, on the phenomenon of social media being used as a lightning rod for online morality laws.
“Influencers face a risk of community-led regulation, via an online backlash, should they transgress perceived moral boundaries.”
The paper suggested that online content was being used to educate and warn visitors of problematic behaviour.
