“If we have no cultural exchange and no dialogue then how can we mend these gaping wounds of humanity.”

I keep coming across this idea among people who love to travel but, sadly, I don’t think that it can be true. Cultural exchange and dialogue can lead to hatred as much as it can to understanding and healing. Look at Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, the Gaza Strip…communities who have lived together and exchanged views with each other for centuries…to return to a grisly, antagonistic result.
It seems that something more than just dialogue and cultural exchange is required…but if I knew what that missing ingredient was, I’d be the proud owner of a Nobel Prize and the winner of that Miss America dream, World Peace.

It’s so important that people who go anywhere abroad attempt to seek out what’s happening there, try to inform themselves as best they can about the situations. Everyone has their own individual set of moral values. If we inform ourselves, we are better equipped to make the decision for ourselves based on our belief system. I would take anything I hear from any government with a (massive) grain of salt. You have to question their motivations behind boycotts/bans.

I’m going to write my own post about it.

Thank you for address this important and significant issue. I’ll be back once I have a proper response for you.

In short, I do NOT support the travel ban on Burma. With respect to the other countries mentioned, I think it’s a case by case basis in determining if an individual is comfortable with traveling to a place that is not advised to travel to and I really don’t know enough about the situations to comment.

I know there are arguments that you are ‘propping up the regime’ but to see the situation and meet the people face to face is essential for any understanding and I honestly think it works both ways. In North Korea (on a guided tour) I spent an afternoon at an amusement park and got to talk to a big group of North Korean children. I speak a bit of Korean from a year spent teaching in South Korea so tried to answer their questions and they weren’t eveil tyrannical questions they were questions, same as ours, about food, customs, culture, people.

If we have no cultural exchange and no dialogue then how can we mend these gaping wounds of humanity. I think the last fifty years have taught us that vested interests prevents and change coming from above (i.e. governments) and that the only decisive change has come from groundswell movements. These include the Jasmine Revolution inspired changes going on at the moment in the Arab world as well as slightly less favourable uprisings such as the Taliban, the Maoists in Nepal and the Nationalist parties in western Europe.

Change can not be dictated.

Here in China, I teach at a university, getting middle class urban kids ready to study abroad. Because I work for an Australian program, I can tackle more serious issues and topics than if I was under Chinese management. My students are starting to think a lot about the world, about ethics, about human rights. Should I not be in China because of what they’ve done? Maybe, maybe not. But my being here is not one I’ve taken lightly.

I’m starting to wonder if these travel bans are really a good idea for the local people- maybe we do need thoughtful and aware tourists/visitors on the ground to scope out the situation and to protest abuses and to let the locals know they aren’t being ignored by the world at large. Bearing witness.

It is related to other travel issues as well – I had an acquaintance in Australia who would make a big song and dance about people using their air-con and how it was bringing the downfall of the planet due to climate change, yet would then happily jet off to Bali with her family for a holiday. I guess I am similarly hypocritical – I rail against the amount of air travel people take, yet later this year I am flying back to Australia to see family (in my defence, I try to keep my air travel to only once ever two or three years, and only trips where other forms of transport are bloody difficult). It is almost as though we want to be seen as principled people yet also don’t want to miss out.