Column

Choose tourism or terrorism

Imtiaz Muqbil

As the world celebrates Tourism Day this month, is it about time for an industry of dreams to devise new ways of coping with nightmares?

Take, for example, the alleged UK terror plot last month. In one swoop, thousands of travellers got stranded, costs went up by millions, security took yet another bizarre turn and talk of racial profiling raised its ugly head. Consider it as just a continuation of years of industry nightmares (SARS, bird flu, tsunami, etc.), which have affected stability, business and ultimately, jobs.

Similar to what followed after the Mumbai bomb blasts in July, "Islamic terrorism" was blamed. Even before they had been questioned, the suspects were lynched by the media. So much for the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty in an era of 'freedom and democracy'.

The ridiculous security measures were reminiscent of the impractical plastic cutlery deployed a few years ago to carve up a succulent business class leg of lamb. Can we, in the travel and tourism industry, afford more of  this stupidity? Probably not. As an instrument of violence, terrorism is a symptom, not a cause. And it is edging dangerously close to hurting the two bedrocks of global tourism - aviation and facilitation.

In seeking remedies, let's apply that famous 'thinking outside the box' cliché and consult a recent UNICEF report called Behind Closed Doors: The Impact of Domestic Violence on Children. To me, domestic violence is a form of terrorism. Consider this quote in the report: "At least one in every three women globally have been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way - most often by someone she knows, including her husband. One woman in four has been abused during her pregnancy."

Topping the many suggested solutions in the report is to "bring this problem into the open" and undertake public information and education campaigns that "challenge common beliefs."

Just as no husband wakes up in the morning and decides at the spur of the moment to beat his wife, terrorism is the result of a host of complex psychological, social, economic and, very importantly, political factors. Indeed, the traditional 'solutions' to terrorism being touted worldwide today are contradictory and uncharacteristically fly in the face of everything that real democracies stand for.

Based on the very well-accepted theory that every action is followed by an equal and opposite reaction, the wrong policies of global leaders are very much a part of the equation. Not holding them accountable for these policies that hurt us all is shocking and insulting.

In his excellent, broad-ranging Independence Day address last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted that India is facing two major threats to its internal security - terrorism and naxalism - a very specific reference designed to stress that it's not only "Islamic terrorism" that is the issue. He said, "Terrorists want to undermine our growing economic strength, destroy our unity and provoke communal incidents. We cannot allow this to happen. Our strength lies in our unity. We will not allow the secular fabric of our country to be broken."

Here in Bangkok, I covered the World University Presidents Summit last July where the regular media chased the keynote speakers - brand-name personalities like Oxford University Rector (and ex-Hong Kong Governor) Lord Chris Patten and lateral thinking guru Edward de Bono. Only a handful heard Prof Ramesh Thakur, senior vice rector, UN University, and assistant UN secretary-general, deliver an insightful keynote titled 'Peace and Social Stability: The Role of the UN in Defeating Terrorism by Promoting Tolerance'.

Like most terrorism papers, he began with a discussion of 9/11 and its role in the US government's "for us or against us" policy reaction. Then, in a departure from conventional wisdom, he said, "consider an earlier terrorist attack."

"In 1985, Air India flight 182 was blown up while flying from Toronto to London. All 329 people aboard were killed. Proportionate to their respective populations, the scale of loss of life due to one terrorist attack for Canada was similar to that of 9/11 for America. And we knew almost immediately who the culprits were: Sikh terrorists seeking independence from India.

"Now consider what Canada did not do. It did not dispatch its military forces to India to drain the swamp of terrorism in Punjab, nor declare a global war on terror, nor demand that Washington carefully screen all Sikh migrants and visitors henceforth. Rather, it increased and improved airport security measures, launched a criminal investigation, and prosecuted the alleged perpetrators in court. The court action failed ultimately, but that is a price we accept in democracies. It is called the rule of law, where prosecution by the government does not entail presumption of guilt and certainty of conviction.

"Yet the menace of Sikh terrorism has more or less disappeared from India as much as in Canada and the Sikhs are valuable and valued members of modern Canadian society steeped in the ethos of multiculturalism."

Today, we have a Sikh Prime Minister and a Muslim President. This is the real India, with much to cherish and be proud of. It's well worth remembering when we celebrate World Tourism Day.

The author is executive editor, Travel Impact Newswire, based in Bangkok