Should you Boycott Repressive Countries?

[TruthSpreader]

When you travel to places that don’t respect human rights, are you supporting an authoritarian regime, or fostering the free exchange of ideas?
By John Rosenthal
[Guard standing at the Gate of Heavenly Peace with portrait of Mao, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China (© Michele Falzone/age fotostock) ]
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This August, about 10,000 athletes, 20,000 journalists and more than a million spectators from 200 countries are expected to descend on Beijing for the Olympic Games. When the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to China back in 2001, many hoped that putting Beijing on the international stage would persuade the Chinese government to improve its record on human rights.
 
Since then, China has been booming with construction as it races to complete stadiums, hotels and highways in time for the games. But as the recent unrest in Tibet has highlighted, the government is falling far short on human rights. And the finish line is fast approaching.
 
The situation in China has led some to consider a boycott of the Olympics, an idea that has proved both unpopular and ineffective in the past. Previous Olympic boycotts — by the U.S. in 1980 and by the Soviet Union in retaliation four years later — achieved little more than political posturing. The protests punished athletes who were forbidden from participating, and cheapened the accomplishments of those who weren’t allowed to compete against the world’s best.
 
A recent MSN-Zogby poll found only tepid support among Americans for a boycott: 31 percent favored it, while 47 percent opposed such a move. Even the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has said he opposes a boycott.
 
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders, which criticizes China for its “glaring lack of freedom,” has advocated a novel solution: a boycott of the opening ceremony. On March 18, it asked heads of state, royal families and other political leaders to put pressure on China’s government by staying away from the games’ ceremonial inauguration. England’s Prince Charles has already announced he will not go to the opening ceremony, and director Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from his role as an artistic consultant to protest China’s support for the Sudanese government and its stance toward the conflict in Darfur.
 
“China has not kept any of the promises it made in 2001 when it was chosen to host these Olympics,” Reporters Without Borders said in a release. “Instead, the government is crushing the Tibetan protests and is imposing a news blackout.”
 
Tala Dowlatshahi, the organization’s New York director, said the intent of boycotting the ceremony was to punish China, rather than Olympic athletes. “We’re not in favor of allowing the Chinese government to celebrate national unity when so many members of its society suffer,” she said.
 
For its part, the International Olympic Committee has chosen to remain neutral on the situation. “It has been much misunderstood that somehow there was a special contract written for Beijing that included human rights,” said Sandrine Tonge, media relations coordinator for the IOC. “This was never the case and would be inappropriate.”
 
In the wake of the Tibetan protests, IOC President Jacques Rogge issued a formal statement declaring the organization’s respect for human rights, but dodging questions about China’s disrespect for them. “We are neither a political nor an activist organization,” said Rogge. “The IOC will work tirelessly with China for the welfare of the athletes and the success of the Olympic Games.”
 
Your own personal boycott
 
So how do people concerned about human rights make their voices heard? Should you travel to countries that have repressive regimes, even though some of your money would go to prop up the authoritarian government?
 
For a great number of travelers, the answer is yes. Each year, almost 50 million people visit China, nearly a million of them from the U.S. Jeffrey Zahn, a New York anesthesiologist, visited in 2005 with his wife and daughter.
 
“I never forgot that China was a totalitarian regime and that there could be tanks in the streets in an instant if there needed to be,” said Zahn. But he said his impressions of what life was like under communist rule were quite different from the reality. “People seemed to be living typical, normal lives.”
 
Zahn said that he witnessed little evidence of repression and that he was surprised at how honest and frank people were in their conversations with him. He added that the opportunity to meet Americans in the flesh was probably just as enlightening for the Chinese — and not just those who profit from the tourist trade. “If we as Americans are being demonized by a repressive regime, exposing ourselves on a person-to-person basis can only help,” Zahn said.


   

Stephanie Yates, a writer from Los Angeles who spent a week in Cuba in 2004, agreed unequivocally: “People traveling between countries are the best way to create peace on Earth.” Yates and her husband traveled with a tour operator that had an educational license to visit Cuba legally, which meant they could bring back cigars and other items subject to its duty limits.
 
Yates said that she and her husband were well aware that some of the money they spent in Cuba would find its way into the pockets of the repressive government. They therefore tried to spend as much cash as possible in ways that funneled money directly to individuals rather than to businesses or government agencies. “It felt really good to tip big, because it was so meaningful to the people.”
 
Uva de Aragón, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, echoed Yates’ sentiments. “The more you open a country that’s repressive, the more possibilities of change there are,” she said. She conceded that tourism inevitably contributes to the government, but said it has equal or greater benefits for individuals working in the hospitality industry, such as housekeepers, bellhops and maids.
 
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, took a dimmer view of tourism’s benefits for the average Cuban. He said that since travel restrictions were loosened in 1990, millions of Canadians, Latin Americans and Europeans have visited Cuba.
 
“Has the standard of living improved? Is there more freedom in Cuba? The answer to both questions is no. So I don’t think Americans have a magic wand they can wave and bring democracy to Cuba.”
 
He reminds would-be visitors that Cuba’s tourism infrastructure is owned in part by the Cuban military, a sworn enemy of the United States. “If we were able to help the Cuban people directly, I have no problem with that. But I don’t want to provide more money to the Cuban government.”
 
A fundamental right to travel?
 
Few Americans are allowed to visit Cuba legally due to an economic embargo that began in 1962 under the regime of former Cuban President Fidel Castro. Opportunities for cultural exchanges between Americans and Cubans decreased drastically in 2004, when the Bush administration introduced legislation that further restricted legal travel to the island. The new regulations severely reduced the availability of licenses to visit for religious and educational purposes, and lowered the amount of money Cuban-Americans could send to relatives back home. They also cut the frequency with which Americans could visit blood relatives in Cuba, from once a year to once every three years.
 
Mavis Anderson, a senior associate at the Latin America Working Group, a human-rights advocacy organization, said the tighter restrictions have denied Americans the fundamental right to travel. She added that the rules have penalized Cubans working in the tourism industry, but have had little impact on the regimes of Castro and his brother Raul, who became president earlier this year and has only recently begun to loosen his brother’s restrictive policies. (Among other changes, Cubans are now allowed to acquire mobile phones and stay in tourist hotels.) “The Cuban government is growing by 7 percent a year, according to the CIA, and has trading partners around the world,” said Anderson. “The country that is isolated by our policy isn’t Cuba; it’s the U.S.”
 
Human Rights Watch, the Washington, D.C.-based organization that investigates, exposes and attempts to redress violations of human rights around the world, acknowledges that tourism boycotts are unlikely to cause a nation to change its politics.
 
HRW Media Director Minky Worden said the organization doesn’t take a position on whether individuals should visit repressive regimes. But to encourage what Worden called “informed visiting,” the group’s Web site includes detailed information on the human-rights records of more than 200 nations. (A negative report doesn’t necessarily mean that U.S. travelers shouldn't visit these countries. Even North Korea, whose record HRW has labeled “abysmal,” welcomed the New York Philharmonic earlier this year in a rare act of goodwill between that country and the United States.)
 
In addition, Worden reminded travelers that in countries with less political freedom, individuals may be punished for speaking their minds. “Ask questions if you can, but don’t get ordinary people into trouble,” she said. But as the experiences of Zahn and Yates show, meeting regular citizens during your travels can be one small step toward bridging the gap between the U.S. and repressive countries around the world.
 
John Rosenthal, a frequent contributor to MSN Travel, is a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, Calif.