TRAVELING TO A DICTATORSHIP
To go or not to go, this
is the question. This question torments the independent travelers and is explained
and turned up side down and on both sides in travel guides and all sorts of
conscientious media outlets.
Should we visit Tibet where the people suffer from the brutal Chinese occupation,
should we visit Myanmar, where the government run by a bunch of ruthless generals
is holding Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 10 years or should we visit
Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge are still at large, threatening the political
process.
You may hear environment conscientious ladies arguing about the fact they don’t
want to put their money in the abusive government pockets, political savvy gentlemen
arguing that international tourism would give a stamp of approval to the legitimacy
of hated rulers, the adventurer type would be concerned that the government
may bar him to travel to particular areas that they consider “unsafe”,
or the human rights conscientious traveler wouldn’t go because of the
forced labor or other stark abuses the government may do to the people.
And they are perfectly right! All these things are happening and all these people
should absolutely be concerned about them.
But something is missing in this equation. It is something important and nobody
seems to be concerned about it:
It’s the PEOPLE
of the country that lives under the dictatorship. Nobody really thinks about
their life as human beings, about what they feel and IF they
may be helped by the independent traveler’s presence.
And I can tell you this because I was born and raised in a dictatorship, one
of the most brutal in modern Europe: Romania under the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu.
Living now for many years in the USA I caught myself thinking in the clichés
I mentioned above, but I cannot be so forgetful about my past and not to remember
how I felt when I was living in Romania. A dictatorship is a very large and
relatively comfortable jail. Your jailers are able to control most of the things
in your life, their main goal being of controlling your mind, and you don’t
have too many lines of defense in front of their actions. They may decide to
change your place of living, they may cut short your supply of food or heat,
they may force you to spend your time in ways they want and in extreme cases
you may just disappear like you never existed and nobody can ask what happened:
your friends and family just dreaming that you ever existed. And most of the
dictatorships are working in very similar ways, in most of them the Socialist/Communist
ideas being the core belief at one point in their development.
I remember when I was living in Romania how terrified I was that foreigners
would not come to see my country. I knew that they were forced to change money
for the government but I wanted them to come no matter what and see with their
own eyes the disaster the dictatorship created and to pass this information
along. It may not have helped in changing things but morally I felt helped because
I was not alone in the hands of my jailers; it was somebody else, and not one
of my jail mates, who saw how I lived and hopefully my torturers cannot do to
me what they had in their sick minds.
I was in need of their presence to see with my own eyes that is still some normality
in the world, that not everybody lives in a jail and these people may be interested
to hear the other people sufferings.
So if you ever asked yourself the politically correct question: to go or
not to go, my humble advice is GO.
Go and talk with people without imposing on them your views or forcing them
to talk. They may be extremely afraid to talk with you, being concerned that
somebody may hear them, but when you ride in the back of a motorcycle in Mandalay
or you are alone with a monk in a Tibet monastery ask them gently what they
think about their countries and you’ll see how their souls will open and
the answers will open a new dimension of understanding for you.
Travel to Tibet to see tears in the monks’ eyes when they hold your hands
just because you are there and see everything and you will be asked to bless
them with the Lonely Planet book just because they saw the picture of His Holiness
inside.
Travel to Myanmar to see how people suffer by an inept government run by a bunch
of thugs dressed in military uniform that tried all sorts of economic models
and failed lamentably in all of them and see how, when is nobody around, they
will tell you how much they hate this government and how much they love Aung
San Suu Kyi.
Travel to Cambodia to see the harrowing suffering on the guide’s face
when he talks, 25 years after, about the Khmer Rouge crimes, that strived to
create the Utopian society any hard core Communist would have dreamt of.
Travel and learn about dictatorships from their own people and about the crimes
of the Communism, its efficiency in killing people surpassing at a far cry the
Nazi killing machine of the Second World War concentration camps but still being,
even today, the hidden darling of the French left-wing intellectuals and the
staunch Anti-Americans all over the world
Travel to where you think that your pure presence may help alleviate people’
suffering.
But always travel independently because only in this way you may stay out of
the government control.
Here, at FlyingMonk, we do firmly believe that YOU, as an Independent traveler,
can make a difference. So we advise you to GO!
The FlyingMonks
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