Report calls for halt to ‘genocide’ tourism
September 13, 2023 | ICT
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The U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project is urging Western travel agencies to stop promoting tours to China’s Xinjiang region, saying it inadvertently endorses Beijing’s oppression of the Uyghur Muslim population, Radio Free Asia reported on Sept. 5.
The advocacy group released a report, “Genocide Tours,” on Aug. 30 that identifies seven Western travel companies that offer itineraries that include stops in Urumqi, Turpan, and Kashgar. The tours also encompass visits to Uyghur homes, which families often cannot decline due to the pervasive state control in the region, according to the report.
“Travel companies have no business in running tours to sites of ongoing atrocities,” said Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Washington, D.C., according to Radio Free Asia.
“Nobody would have dreamed of taking tourists into Rwanda, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, or Darfur in the midst of the horrors in these places. The same should apply to East Turkistan,” he said, using the Uyghurs’ preferred name, meaning “New Territory” in Mandarin, for Xinjiang.
The travel companies are headquartered in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Among the firms identified in the report are Abercrombie & Kent, Bamboo Travel, Geographical Expeditions, Goway Travel, Intrepid Travel, Laurus Travel, and Wild Frontiers, the latter also operating under the name Myths and Mountains, Radio Free Asia reported.
Human rights organizations, the U.S. government, and several Western parliaments have officially classified the Chinese government’s actions towards the Uyghurs as genocide or crimes against humanity. A 2022 report from the United Nation’s human rights office indicated the treatment of Uyghurs may constitute crimes against humanity.
About 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities have been detained in camps and prisons, with reports of torture, forced sterilizations of women, coerced labor, suppression of religious beliefs and expressions, and the deliberate erasure of cultural heritage. China has consistently denied allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
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