KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 — The organisers of the Tattoo Malaysia Expo 2019 today apologised to the people of Malaysia over a semi-nude incident during a competition that went viral on social media recently.
Blackout Trading founder, only known as Carlos @ Benny, said the incident was truly unintentional and they sincerely took full responsibility, and assured that they will be taking the necessary steps to prevent it from happening in the future.
“We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all of the people of Malaysia who have been affected by the recently viral posts regarding the event. The lack of due diligence on our end should not have happened.
“We have clearly failed to protect the interests of the public. We now only ask for forgiveness for us to set things right and fix what can be fixed, rest assured, history shall not repeat itself as we have learned from our mistakes and will only come back stronger,” he said in a statement.
Carlos said that the event had obtained support from Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), an agency under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia, but stressed that the agency should not be blamed for the incident.
“We failed to provide full disclosure on the activities happening during our event. Despite the shortcoming from our end, we understand that it does not and will not amount to a defence,” he said.
Carlos said they will respect the decision made by the Ministry and MyCEB and will accept the consequence of their lack of disclosure.
Tattoo Malaysia Expo 2019 which was held from November 29 until December 1 had participants from 35 countries. The expo was previously held in Sabah in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Yesterday, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi said that the ministry will take appropriate action against the organiser of Tattoo Malaysia Expo 2019 following the incident and had instructed the MyCeB to investigate the matter. — Bernama
