Goa Authorities Ban Beach Parties

Bjork

international news_ Jonty Skrufff _ 14th February 2005

Goa Authorities Ban Beach Parties

Goa's newly elected Government took control of the West Indian state this week and immediately announced a total ban on raves along the Anjuna-Arpora beach belt.

Tourist minister Dr Wilfred de Souza said raves in the area had been disturbing locals and schools in particular, and ordered police not to allow a single rave party to take place from now on. Local press reports said nuns in a local convent complained of being kept awake by three day long non stop parties around Anjuna, which has long been the heart of Goa's psychedelic trance community.

The latest proposed comes just two years after Goa's previous government launched a similar campaign banning loud music on the beaches between 10 and 7am, which prompted the Guardian to suggest the rave scene had disappeared, in an article last April.

"Anjuna (previously the heart of the back packer/party culture) was a ghost town," the newspaper reported, "The cafes stood empty, their shutters banging theatrically in the breeze."

However, the legendarily hedonistic resort attracted much worse publicity in the Washington Times the same month, when police announced a massive increase of foreigners dying, which the paper suggested was linked to drug overdoses, many involving ketamine.

"A new police report pointed to at least 59 "mysterious deaths" of foreign tourists in the past 15 months," said the Times. "Twenty-five of the visitors died in a three-month period; the peak tourist season between December 2003 and February 2004."

28 of the dead tourists came from Britain. (Jonty Skrufff / Skrufff.com)

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