Some Travel Companies Still Offer Trips to Xinjiang Despite Rights Abuses, Report Finds
FILE – Tourists pose for photos with a camel outside the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as seen during a government organized trip for foreign journalists, on April 19, 2021.
WASHINGTON — Despite evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, major international travel companies are continuing to offer tours to the northwestern Chinese region, a new report found.
Those trips risk bolstering Beijing’s destruction and co-optation of Uyghur culture and reinforcing the propaganda narrative that all is well in the region, according to the report released Wednesday by the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP).
The report identifies at least seven travel companies that currently offer tours to the region China calls Xinjiang, which the report and many Uyghurs prefer to describe as East Turkistan.
Despite the well-documented abuses, companies like U.S.-based Abercrombie & Kent, U.K.-based Bamboo Travel and Canada-based Laurus Travel continue to offer trips to historic cities like Kashgar and Urumqi, the region’s capital.
Henryk Szadziewski, the report’s author, urges all travel companies to immediately stop offering tours to the region.
“By taking organized tours to the Uyghur Region, you really do run the risk of complicity with the genocide,” Szadziewski told VOA from Hawaii, where he is based.
“The optics of turning a profit while organizing tours to a region that has ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide are terrible,” said Szadziewski, who is also the UHRP’s research director.
Since the report was released, two companies — Canada-based Goway Travel and Australia-based Intrepid Travel — have said they would no longer offer tours to Xinjiang, according to the UHRP.
Since releasing our briefing—which companies have committed to *ending* #GenocideTours in the Uyghur region? 🤔
✅ @GowayTravel (withdrawn)
✅ @Intrepid_Travel (withdrawn)
❌ @AKTravel_UK
❌ @LaurusTravel
❌ @GeoEx
❌ @WildFrontiers *
❌ @BambooTravel **https://t.co/fVRdS2onBS— Uyghur Human Rights Project (@UyghurProject) August 30, 2023
“Intrepid Travel has not operated this itinerary since 2019 and it has recently been removed,” company spokesperson Nicole Powell told VOA in an emailed statement.
The United States and several other countries have accused Beijing of committing widespread human rights abuses — including genocide and crimes against humanity — against Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang. A 2022 report from the U.N. human rights office determined that abuses in the region may constitute crimes against humanity.
Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/some-travel-companies-still-offer-trips-to-xinjiang-despite-rights-abuses-report-finds-/7251134.html
