Tourism in dictatorships

[Kralizec]

A relative of mine told me a while ago that he plans to visit China during a vacation. Other relatives and friends of mine have visited Egypt, Tunesia, et cetera. My mother visited Chzechoslovakia when she was young during a summer for some sort of volunteer work exchange project or whatever, and amusingly enough she and her peers stayed at what was called a "labour camp" - I kid you not.

My perspective is a little more limited. I have visited Berlin, Budapest and other cities for genuine sight seeing, but by and large most of my vacations were with friends at various tourist resorts and consisted of chasing girls (and sometimes succeeding), getting drunk (always succeeding) and other meaningless activities. The point is, I've never actually set foot outside of Europe.

Anyway, with said relative who intends to go to China, we eventually got into a discussion of morality. I casually asked wether he had no qualms about being a tourist, a privileged person, in what is essentially a dictatorship. For whatever reason he was personally offended and the "discussion" didn't last long - his stance was essentially that it was none of his business how the Chinese (or Egyptians, Cubans or whatever) govern themselves and that it shouldn't concern him even while he was in their midst.

It's not something that I've put a lot of thought in till now, because so far I've never seriously contemplated visiting any of "those countries". When I started thinking about it, however, I wondered wether I could in good conscience ever do so. The thought that every native I would meet and interact with has significantly less freedom than I do might make me uneasy (and get in the way of enjoying my drink)

Thoughts?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I expect the natives will be concerned mostly with their day-to-day life, which would of course be the same whether they live in a Western-style liberal democracy or an authoritarian regime. Of those who do spend any amount of thought on it, quite a few would most likely not even want the former.

The exception would be totalitarian regimes like North Korea or failed states like Somalia. But you probably wouldn't be going there anyway.

[rory_20_uk]

I assume that we can go to countries such as the USA with a clear conscience as they never do anything morally ambiguous.

[Kralizec]

I expect the natives will be concerned mostly with their day-to-day life, which would of course be the same whether they live in a Western-style liberal democracy or an authoritarian regime. Of those who do spend any amount of thought on it, quite a few would most likely not even want the former.

The exception would be totalitarian regimes like North Korea or failed states like Somalia. But you probably wouldn't be going there anyway.

I realize that the average person in a dictatorship spends more thought on stuff that is directly relevant to himself (employment, housing and whatnot) but that strikes me as a rather flimsy excuse.

When somebody mentiones "North Korea" it is universally remembered and recognised as a horrorible dictatorship. Most dictatorships are not that bad, and have even became "salonfähig". Before the events of the Arab spring it had become perfectly normal to travel to Tunesia or Egypt to enjoy their sunny beaches and whatnot. When trouble did break out in Tunesia, a French minister even suggested that France should send personel and aid to help Ben Ali's regime against the protestors

But the naked truth is that those countries are dictatorships, and a western tourist who's only there for a couple of weeks actually enjoys more freedom than the natives do in their own country. If by a slip of the mouth such a tourist makes a casual joke about the regime, the authorities wouldn't lay a finger on him for the plain simple reason that they don't want a diplomatic incident or endanger their tourism industry. Yet for the native who overheard the joke and laughs about it, it could be a different story.

I assume that we can go to countries such as the USA with a clear conscience as they never do anything morally ambiguous.

Assuming that this is referring to the way that the USA deals with other countries, that's besides the point - the point of the OP is how people are treated in their own countries.

[rory_20_uk]

So... as long as countries only abuse and murder persons outside their border that is all fine and dandy and we should adopt a Western holier-than-thou attitude on those that treat their own in the same way?

[Kralizec]

So... as long as countries only abuse and murder persons outside their border that is all fine and dandy and we should adopt a Western holier-than-thou attitude on those that treat their own in the same way?

If all this is a reason for you not to visit the US, be my guest. It just hasn't anything to do with the reasons I've outlined in the OP, which I've explained well enough I think.

[Vladimir]

So... as long as countries only abuse and murder persons outside their border that is all fine and dandy and we should adopt a Western holier-than-thou attitude on those that treat their own in the same way?

Don't visit us, we'll kill you: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news...19/detail.html

If we do this to our own people, imagine what we'd do to you.