British backpacker Eleanor Hawkins, who has been arrested in Malaysia for posing naked on top of a sacred mountain, knows what she did was “stupid and disrespectful and is very sorry for the offence that she has caused”, her father said on Thursday.
The 23-year-old, from Derby, was one of 10 trekkers who stripped on Mount Kinabalu on May 30th in a stunt that a local official said was insulting to indigenous people, suggesting it may even be considered the cause of an earthquake that killed 18 people days later.
The father of Hawkins has appealed to the authorities not to make an example of her, amid fears for her safety after the prank was blamed for causing a deadly earthquake. Hawkins was arrested at Tawau airport on Tuesday before she was due to depart for Kuala Lumpur.
She appeared in court on Wednesday with Dylan Snel, a Dutch tourist, and Lindsey and Danielle Petersen, two Canadian siblings, court sources have confirmed.
The four were remanded for four days pending further investigations into alleged indecency.
Hawkins’ father, Tim, who runs his own mechanical engineering business in Derby, said: “I would like to appeal to the Malaysian authorities. I have got every faith in their judicial system. I just hope they don’t make an example of them after the tragic earthquake.”
Hawkins said he spoke to his daughter on Wednesday morning: “She is obviously upset. She’s pretty scared. But it was good to speak to her.”
Sabah’s indigenous Kadazan Dusun people believe the tourists’ behaviour angered the spirit of the mountain and was the reason for a 5.9-magnitude earthquake, which six days later struck near the mountain, killing 18 climbers.
Sabah’s deputy chief minister, Joseph Pairin Kitingan, said a special ritual would be conducted to “appease the mountain spirit”.
Sabah’s state tourism minister, Masidi Manjun, said the suggestion that the tourists’ actions had caused the earthquake was “misconstrued”. “I never said that they actually caused the earthquake, but their actions were against the people of the largest tribe in Sabah. The mountain is a revered and sacred site,” he said.
