Earlier this month, Adelaide metalcore band ‘I Killed The Prom Queen’ were invited to play a show at live music venue Farenheit88 in Malaysia.
They played the gig and it all went really well, until they were met by a bunch of Malaysian police, taken into detention, and held there for 2 days.
While it seems like pretty basic logic that to earn money in another country you usually have to obtain a working visa of some kind, the band’s Malaysian management allegedly told them that it wasn’t necessary.
Jona Weinhofen, who you may remember from the fraudulent sheep-shearing PETA ad earlier this year, said this about the bands ordeal:
“We just kept getting the same answers ‘no, no permits needed. We’ve toured bands here a million times in the past seven, eight years and we’ve never gotten permits. You don’t need it’.”
“We got put into a cell which was about probably 10×15 feet squared, including the toilet area, and there was approximately 30 prisoners in there. We slept on tiles for two nights in a row … given the shittiest rations, there were cockroaches everywhere … the toilet was just a hole in the floor.”
The band had to wait two days for the Australian High Commission‘s business hours to begin, due to unfortunately being detained on a weekend:
“Around about 11am [on the Monday] a couple of guards came and pulled us out of the cell. We were all handcuffed together and we were told we’d be taken upstairs for questioning. We were upstairs in the office again in handcuffs for about an hour … that’s when Michelle Anderson from the High Commission in Kuala Lumpur turned up with an interpreter.”
However, he did make sure to note that the Malaysian Immigration Department‘s Director General, Mustafa Ibrahim, did come to see them and apologise for their treatment: “He said `I’m so sorry you were treated this way, this shouldn’t have happened. The fault lay with the promoter completely and they will be the ones that will be prosecuted’.”
“We had a pretty bad ordeal but I like to think that we as people, and Australians, take this kind of stuff in our stride. It’s in the past now. I’m back home, we just ate a really good meal and I’m back to normal life.”
Sorry Malaysia but after this horrible experience I don’t think we will return in a hurry
— Jona Weinhofen ? (@jonaweinhofen) November 16, 2015
He seems to have done a complete 180 on the idea of never returning to Malaysia, though:
“I did post a tweet saying we wouldn’t be back in a hurry but to be honest the show itself was fantastic … the fans in Malaysia are fantastic.”
Maybe just a working visa this time, lads? Yeah, nice one.
via Newscorp.
Image: Tom Barnes via Newscorp.
