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Every country has its sacred sites where there are things people should absolutely not do when visiting.
Myanmar has the ancient city of Bagan and its thousands of revered temples. Near one of them, a tourist couple has committed the gravest of cultural insults by shooting an explicit 12-minute porn video.
Unsurprisingly, anger and shock is reverberating throughout Myanmar social media, with many users calling for the removal of the video.
The clip was uploaded two months ago to PornHub, an online library of explicit videos, but came to prominence this week after a Twitter account affiliated with the website reportedly posted it.
Myanmar LGBTI rights advocate Kendrick Owen learned about the video when his friend asked whether it was shot in Myanmar.
He clicked the link and took a screenshot of the Myanmar language pagoda number—1574—to share his disapproval on Facebook.
“I am a strong human rights defender and I respect other people’s rights, but rights come with accountability and responsibility,” Owen told Myanmar Mix.
“I find the behaviour of this couple very insulting. Doing this outdoors at a sacred religious site for the taste of one’s agoraphilia is just inappropriate and disrespectful to the people of that country, its culture and the religion of its people.”
The man and woman in the video should be identified and banned from returning to Myanmar, he said.
The couple’s PornHub account describes their birthplace as Italy and their age as 23.
“We’re a fun couple, down to earth and open to trying all sorts of new things!” reads the bio of the account, which has over 80,000 subscribers. “We’re here to have fun with you! Tip for motivation to make more videos!”
On their visit to the Unesco-inscribed site, the couple would have passed numerous signs warning foreigners not to dress inappropriately—although an unbuttoned shirt or short skirt pales in comparison to the content of their video.
"This is a deliberate insult,” wrote one Facebook user. “They know this a UNESCO heritage site. Would they be brave enough to do this in other countries' heritage sites? They should be immediately captured.”
“They should be brutally punished,” wrote another user. “So evil."
The clip also seems to have started a moralist debate in PornHub’s comment section, with one user writing the couple should be more respectful and get a hotel.
The controversy is likely to give fuel to Buddhist hardliners, as the country experiences a growing wave of nationalism in the wake of genocide accusations against the state.
Myanmar citizens have criticised foreigners for behaving insensitively in Bagan before. In 2016, a Spanish tourist was deported from Myanmar after his leg tattoo of Buddha was spotted by monks in the temple town.
The same year, Vogue Korea was widely criticised for holding a photo shoot among the temples, with some models wearing shoes inside the pagodas.
And in 2017, an Instagram couple removed a photo of one of them posing naked from behind in Bagan after social media users deemed the image offensive.
