Ukraina Model marianna fedchuk, ekaterina kashenko and dariya khorunzhenko

10 months ago By Roni Sianturi

Dubai plans to deport Ukraina Model for taking naked photos on a high-rise balcony.

Dubai is expected to deport approximately a dozen Ukrainian women and one Russian man detained following uproar in the glitzy, conservative Gulf city state over a nudist photo shoot they staged on a high-rise balcony.

The shoot violated UAE rule, Dubai's government said Tuesday in a statement on Twitter, declining to comment further.

Earlier this week, authorities announced the arrest of a group of foreign nationals for allegedly taking a series of naked photographs from a balcony in the affluent Marina neighborhood. According to the BBC, police said the photo shoot, whose photographs were posted on social media, did not "represent the values and ethics of Emirati society."

Dubai authorities charged those arrested with public debauchery and pornographic production, though their swift deportation appears to have been ordered without a formal trial.

Though Dubai is eager to draw foreign visitors and industry, including Instagram influencers, the city-state has retained a slew of restrictive social and political rules. Until November of last year, consensual sex between unmarried couples was illegal. Prior to the amendment, a British woman was sentenced to one year in prison for breaking the rule in 2017.

According to the BBC, Ukraine's foreign ministry said consular officials paid a visit to 12 detained Ukrainian women on Tuesday. The nationalities and total number of participants in the photo shoot were not immediately available.

Around 90% of the UAE's 9 million inhabitants are foreigners. Many are migrant workers from East and South Asia engaged in construction or domestic labor, while others work in the sheikhdom's thriving business and tourism hubs.

A series of legislative amendments last year aimed to ease social constraints in order to draw foreign investors, but several restrictions remain. Sharing obscene content is punishable by imprisonment. According to the Associated Press, Dubai's majority state-owned telecom firms block access to pornographic websites and conduct other Internet surveillance.