Cambodia: Brits face year in prison for ‘pornographic’ dancing

Prosecutors in Cambodia have charged ten foreigners, including five British men, over photos described by officials as pictures of “pornographic dancing”.

The group were arrested on Thursday after images emerged of people appearing to imitate sex acts at a party in a villa in the tourist hotspot of Siem Reap.

The defendants - eight men and two women, all aged between 19 and 35 - “could be jailed for up to a year and could also face six months in detention waiting for the case to go to trial”, says Sky News.

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The mother of one of the group said she fears they may have been pressured into a confession, reports the Daily Mail.

Police later posted a group shot of the ten defendants, but several people in the original images do not appear to be among those arrested, an unnamed member of the group told the Press Association.

They said “they did not understand why they were being held, adding that they saw one of the arrested men vomiting in shock”, reports The Guardian.

The Britons arrested were named as Vincent Harley Robert Hook, 35, Daniel Richard Leeming Jones, 30, Thomas Alexander Jeffries, 22, Billy Stevens, 21, and Paul Francis Harris, 32. The UK Foreign Office said it was providing support.

“Authorities in Cambodia have clamped down on visitors posting revealing images of themselves at temple sites,” in recent years, says The Guardian. “Tourists showing cleavage or wearing skimpy clothes have been banned from the Angkor temple complex since August 2016.”