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You are here: Home / Archives for politics

Let’s Talk about Genocide

November 18, 2010 By Danny

As a traveler, it can be hard to deal with a country’s political situation or history. Sometimes its as simple as jumping through hoops to get a visa, but other times its something much more morally complex. We’ve dealt with this a number of times along our journey, first and foremost being Sudan. Sudan, a country whose President is wanted in the International Criminal Court for three counts of genocide, whose government doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and who continues to perpetrate genocide on its lands.

From Sudan through the Middle East into Israel, and were confronted with our own Jewish history, as well as a rather surprising number of Sudanese refugees for that matter. From Israel we, rather ironically, flew to Berlin. We toured Germany for about one week and in that time visited one of Hitler’s first, and possibly most feared concentration camp, Dachau. Continuing east through Europe those images stayed with us as we saw traces of the war through several former Soviet states.

Next stop, Turkey. No mention there of the Turk’s work in the Armenian Genocide, that’s because all those Armenians are either dead or living in the West. Once we got to Armenia though, the floodgates opened on what was the first genocide, of far more than one, in the 20th century. We left Armenia for Kazakhstan, final resting place to many who were sent to, and never returned from, the fearsome Soviet Gulags.

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And now, we find ourselves in Cambodia where the horrors of the 20th Century continue to follow us. In one morning we visited a school that was turned into a torturous prison and then moved to the fields where those prisoners were killed; appropriately named ‘The Killing Fields.’ These sites date from the 1970s.

When the US pulled out of Vietnam, it did the same in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh two weeks before Saigon fell. The North Vietnamese sent those who fought for the Southern Vietnamese government packing to the US and Australia. The Khmer Rouge, on the other hand, sought a more enduring solution.

The Khmer Rouge turned a Phnom Penh high school into the S-21 prison, where 17,000 men and women were held and subjected to Nazi-like levels of cataloging before being sent to ‘The Killing Fields’ for their final solution. At the prison, even without a guide, it was easy to understand what was happening as locals closely scanned through photos of the victims on the walls, stopped at one and cried as they took a photo.

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Visiting the fields themselves was even worse, seeing the tree that babies were swung against, by their ankles, to kill them so they couldn’t grow up and enact revenge on those responsible for their parents; deaths. Walking through the fields pieces of clothes, teeth, and bone poke up through the dirt and grass. Many of the mass burial pits have not been cordoned off and walking along the dirt paths, no matter how hard you try not to, it is clear that you are walking over remains. In several places people had collected these bone fragments and teeth under small shelters in a makeshift memorial to those who had died. A newly built pagoda/stupa stands in the center of the area. Filled with the skeletal remains of 8000 bodies found in one of several mass graves on site, the bones are behind glass, but on more than one it is easy to see how the person was killed.

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Although 17,000 may not sound like a large number in comparison to the 12 million killed by the Nazis, the total loss of human life at the hands of the Khmer Rouge however, inclusive of far more travesties than I’ve discussed here, are currently estimated at around 2 million; somewhere between one quarter and one third of Cambodia’s entire population at the time.

Travel is fun, enjoyable, and generally fills us with great memories and stories we will cherish for the rest of our lives. Just as importantly, it can show us the other side of human nature and world history, one that unfortunately is not so wonderful…

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, Cambodia, Headline Tagged With: destruction, genocide, history, politics

China Through a Child’s Eyes

November 4, 2010 By Danny

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To My Kindergarten Class –

Hello from China. I came here for vacation and lots of things here are different.

When the traffic light is red you are supposed to go because it it’s more fun than waiting, but when it is green you have to go slow because all the people that have red go too. I was confused and didn’t know that red and green both mean go and so when I went across there were lots of cars going on both sides of the street and some were even on the wrong side! I think that they don’t know how to play red light green light in the schools here.

Then there were bikes and one carrying 3 people hit a dog. We had to stop in the middle road 6 times to let the cars go ahead of us and then when we finally got across, a car was driving on the sidewalk. I think the car thought the sidewalk was the street because of how many people were in the street. They should make a video game out of it – it would be fun!

Then I saw a special pet shop that sold lots of dead animals, but like snakes and insects and stuff, but someone said it was a medicine store so it must be a special place to take your pet for help if it’s sick and then they just keep it there for you in case it dies. People were coming and paying lots of money for little baggies filled with bugs and snake skin so maybe it was a wizard shop and not a medicine shop…like in Harry Potter.

Lots of people must have pets though because everywhere where we went we saw turtles and frogs and lots of other things that you could buy. I tried to get a pet frog but the tour leader said the one I picked out wouldn’t taste good and that I should pick out another one later. Then he said that once we got to the south I could pick out my own dog…I’m going to get a Lassie dog if my mom lets me.

IMGP7702They are something called communist here and that means that everyone shares everything, just like we’re supposed to do with the glue in school, so that there aren’t any poor people. It is very nice that all the people take care of all the other people but I think it only works if you’re a communist too. Some people drive around in really fancy James Bond cars while other people ride bikes with their entire family on them. Maybe they aren’t communist or they’d have a car too! The train even has different areas, there’s the nice part where you sleep in a room with 3 other people or a not nice one where the whole train car is packed like a can of sardines (that’s what my grandpa would say) with a hundred people, animals and bags. It looked like they couldn’t even breathe!

They have lots of candy here. Some is really yummy, but there isn’t any chocolate. Most of the candy has strange flavors like corn, tea, shrimp, milk and stuff like that. I miss chocolate candy. I think all the people are on diets all the time because they wear masks over their faces so that they don’t eat the candy, even though it tastes bad.

One morning we got up early to see where the communism got started. It was a place called Tienanmen Square and is famous because sometimes they bring in tanks and park them in the road so that people can stop and look at them, I guess we don’t do that back home because I never saw it before. They also have big picture of Chairman Moe on the wall. Everyone here likes Moe, but my dad always said Curly was the best. I think it is fake-like though (sorta like when you get a bad birthday present) because it is just a picture and not a statue and if they really liked him then they would have made a statue.
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I like it here but I want to come home soon, everywhere I go people try to take pictures of me. It is weird because they take my picture and then the tour leader yells at them for doing it and then later when the tour leader isn’t looking they come and ask me if they can take my picture because I look like a movie star, even though I’m not that old yet. I say yes but then they have two pictures but only asked for one. I think when they take two pictures instead of just one they call that ‘saving face’ because all the grown up people complain about how they always try to save face and getting two pictures of my face must be doing that.

See you soon!
Danny

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, China, Headline, History & Culture Tagged With: cultural differences, funny, politics, satire

Beijing!

November 3, 2010 By Jillian

It’s official, we’ve made it around the world; or at least in my opinion. Beijing is just about as far east as we could go overland from Istanbul. Although Xi’an was technically the end of the silk road, Beijing was always the end in my head, so when we arrived I was elated.

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There’s so much to do in Beijing, more than we had the time or desire for, but you have to start somewhere. Arriving into the station at 4am, we caught the raising of the flag in Tienanmen Square at dawn. IMGP9109Quite literally we were the only westerner’s there, but the Chinese tourists were going crazy with excitement when the color guard showed up, waving their flags and shoving their camera’s into the air. We were tempted to wave an American flag in that crowd…just to see what the response might have been. Didn’t have one with us though, and with the show over at 6:30am we were left with nothing to do for a few hours. This didn’t bother the crowd of Chinese tour groups, they promptly walked across the square to stand in line for two hours to view the preserved body of Chairman Mao.

IMGP9145Not interesting in standing in line for two hours to see the Chairman, we walked down to the Temple of Heaven, an ancient site for imperial worship and low and behold we found the place abuzz with activity. The park was full of Chinese participating in Tai Chi classes, music classes, aerobics classes, dance classes, playing cards, bands and even a few practicing martial arts with swords and sticks. It might have been 7am?

We stumbled into a group tango lesson practicing to a tango version of happy birthday- in English, and a few harmonica players, one who was practicing Yankee Doodle and My Darlin’ Clemantine over and over again. Our experience in the park was one of numerous moments that left us thinking “what?” IMGP9206Standing in the shadow of the one of the holiest sites for the Chinese Royal family, watching dance classes, listening to traditional Chinese music and an old man attempt ‘scarf’ dancing to the enjoyment of his friends, was a travel memory I’ll never forget.

Besides sightseeing we did do some rather “Chinese” things that hadn’t yet been attempted on our trip. Although moto-bikes and cars are more common than they used to be, the bicycle is still a main mode of transportation; and often with passengers hanging on the back as well. A true Chinese experience, we got the opportunity to try it our first night in Beijing. I rode on the back rack of our couchsurfing host’s bike to dinner. Jostling around in the back on her rickety second hand Chinese bike I thought I was going to die, fall off, or at best end up with a broken bone or two. My legs were too long to straddle the bike properly but sitting side-saddle left the bike precariously unbalanced, so I resorted to straddling the rack and awkwardly lifting my legs at weird angles to keep them off the ground. IMGP6121 It was a work-out just trying to stay balanced, keep my legs up off the ground and close enough to the bike not to knock into something all while riding down a pot holed alley. Our couchsurfing host knew the road however, and as we bounced along the worst injuries I got were bruises to my butt and pride. Dinner was delicious and tucked into a small Sichuan restaurant in a huotong, or alley, surrounded by a mix of young Chinese and expats. Although I was just happy to have made it to Beijing, don’t expect me to willingly ride on the back of a bicycle again. I’m going to leave that one to the Chinese.

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, China, Headline Tagged With: China, cities, politics, tourism

The Uygur’s China

October 13, 2010 By Jillian

Editors Note: We are having extreme difficulty posting from China, especially with Flickr, so please be patient with us.

Our first week in China passed in an area that has virtually nothing to do with the stereotypical images of China. We entered into Xinjiang autonomous region, an area of China populated by the Uygur people, who have more in common with the Turks in Turkey than with the Han in China.

IMGP5953Muslim, the Uygurs speak a Turkic language which uses Arabic script rather than Chinese characters. A mix of Asian and European features, Uygurs are a central Asian people that settled in what is now northwestern China during the heyday of the silk road trade. Raising mostly sheep, the Uygurs are soft agrarian people and it wasn’t until the highly publicized political problems of the last few years that most westerner’s had even heard of them.

A July 2009 demonstration in the region turned bloody and caught the attention of the worldwide media. The plight of the Uygurs was brought to light and suddenly China had a second, very public minority problem on their hands (the first being Tibet). We entered the region expecting to find a repressed minority, but instead we found Urumqi, a thriving, densely populated Chinese city that’s home to a Louis Vuitton and a Cartier. It wasn’t the sort of economic situation I was expecting, in fact the place seemed booming.

IMGP5955It didn’t take long to realize the Chinese government had in place some very enticing economic incentives for Han Chinese families to move into the area. With all the violence in the last few years I expected to feel more tension on the street, but like most places, people are getting on with their lives, putting one foot in front of the other and taking one day at a time. Several days later, outside of Xinjiang province, a Han Chinese woman told us she would be scared to go into that province, for fear she would be singled out to violence because of last year’s political unrest. I’m not sure how many other Han Chinese feel the same way, but it certainly makes for an interesting discussion.

A few days later, in a smaller town, with a very clear Uygur majority, the tables were turned and it would have taken someone to tell us we were in China, for on the street you never would have known it. Unfortunately very few people speak English and we speak neither Mandarin nor Uygur (nor Arabic or Turkish) so although we were consumed by questions we left without many answers. It was disappointing because both of us were literally filled to the brim with political and social questions. Perhaps with more effort we could have found someone who spoke enough English to answer our questions, but then again, after what happened to me at the border I wouldn’t be surprised if they would refuse to talk to us out of fear of  reprisal.

Filed Under: Asia & Oceania, China, Headline Tagged With: cultures, minorities, politics, religion

Istanbul, Constantinople?

August 9, 2010 By Jillian

Istanbul, Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople.

Istanbul is the only city in the world that straddles two continents. Seriously, you take the ferry from Europe to Asia in less than 20 minutes. Naturally it was the best place to start our final continent, Asia. Our plan is to travel generally east along the old silk road to China.IMGP5531

Besides being the crossroads of the world, the Ottoman’s ruled quite an empire from here, and it’s no wonder that at times we feel like we’re at the center of the world. Huge container ships run in and out of the cargo ports while cruise ships drop hundreds of passengers off for day trips in Istanbul. It’s a flurry of activity here, but also surprising orderly and quiet. Lost in the Grand Bazaar, well not lost but 1000 souvenir and carpet shops pretty much look the same, we ducked into a small alley. Seconds later we were transported to a tiny courtyard, silent except for the clicking and clacking of backgammon pieces. A table of older men looked up at me, smiled and went back to sipping their tea and playing their game. I melted back into the bazaar appreciating the seemingly intimate moment I had just had with Istanbul.
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Istanbul it seems, is like that. Standing on the street trying to buy a ‘simit’, a bagel like bread covered with toasted sesame seeds, I was having difficulty understanding the vendor. Stepping right in, a man assisted us with the purchase and began to chit chat. Less than two minutes later we were invited into his carpet shop for tea. Expecting a hard sale inside, I was surprised to find myself sitting on a cushioned bench sipping black Turkish tea without the salesman in sight. Instead the owner, himself enjoying a tea began to discuss philosophy with us, the meaning of life and so on. Two hours later we walked out of the shop. That’s just the way things are.

Turkey is a secular Muslim country. Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it. Although being secular and Muslim at the same time can be a bit of a political challenge, Istanbul at least seems to be a city that walks the entire spectrum. In front of me in the ice cream line is a woman completely covered head to toe including a modesty veil on her face with a designer handbag slung over one shoulder. Only a small slit over her eyes belies the fact that there is a person inside all that fabric. Purchasing a cone is a woman in a tight, colorful outfit her hair covered in a designer silk scarf

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and sunglasses. Behind me is a Turkish woman in a rather revealing tank top, mini-skirt and high heels. Like I said, it spans the entire spectrum. This is a dynamic, welcoming city where everyone on either end of the spectrum and everywhere in between can feel welcome and comfortable.

Walking into a bar the other night we heard the evening call to prayer across the city. The mosques are not synchronized so at times it’s a cacophony of melodious Arabic. Never in any Muslim country to date have I been so aware of the irony of my surroundings and situation (alcohol is forbidden in Islam). Not to sound cliché, but it’s a juxtaposition between continents and worlds here.

Filed Under: Europe, Headline, History & Culture, Middle East, Turkey Tagged With: culture, politics, religion

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