Climber who posed for controversial naked pictures on Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu may be Hong Kong resident

A Canadian hiker said to be a Hong Kong resident was one of a group of tourists that posed for pictures in their birthday suits atop Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu, a stunt which caused uproar among locals and officials who said they had offended the spirits of the sacred site and so caused Friday's earthquake.

Emil Kaminski became infamous among the online community after posting the pictures, and has since called Masidi Manjun, the minister for tourism, culture and environment in the East Malaysian state of Sabah, an "idiot" and "not a minister of tourism" for blaming the nudists for the quake, which left at least 16 people dead.

Kaminski posted the comments on his Twitter account along with a picture of a naked man's derriere against a background of several mountains.

An earlier tweet also referred to the minister as a "dildo".

A Facebook search for the name Emil Kaminski suggests the user is a Canadian living in Hong Kong.

The name is also linked to MonkeeTime, a travel website dedicated to videos and pictures of Kaminski's exploits.

Messages sent to the website by the South China Morning Post last night received no reply.