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International travel fairs targeted over Botswana boycott

Supporters of tribal rights organization Survival International handed hundreds of flyers to visitors and tourism industry professionals, urging them to stay away from Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live freely on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

Protestors have targeted Botswana tourism at the Adventure Travel Show in London and the Fitur travel fair in Madrid, to highlight Botswana’s persecution of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen.

Supporters of tribal rights organization Survival International handed hundreds of flyers to visitors and tourism industry professionals, urging them to stay away from Botswana until the Bushmen are allowed to live freely on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). The Botswana Tourism Organization had stands at both events.

Botswana is using violence, torture and intimidation to stop the Bushmen from hunting and to drive them off their land in the CKGR, while attracting tourists to the country with contrived images of Bushmen hunters.

Bushman Mogolodi Moeti told Botswana’s Sunday Standard newspaper, “While they (SSG) were assaulting me they told me that even the President was aware of what was happening; that they were busy beating me up. They told me that even if they kill me no charges would be laid against them because what they were doing to me was an order from the government.”

The majority of Bushmen are forced to apply for restrictive entry permits to access the CKGR in a system which has been likened to the hated Pass Laws under apartheid South Africa, and the Bushmen’s British lawyer has been banned from entering the country.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “Botswana continues to flog luxury tours to the CKGR using the image of ’exotic’ Bushmen wearing skins and the promise of a chance to ‘experience the traditional way of life of Kalahari hunter-gatherers’. In reality, Africa’s last hunting Bushmen are being starved, tortured, beaten and intimidated off their land, and the government is doing everything possible to stamp out that very way of life it uses to sell exclusive holidays. Clearly only those Bushmen that generate income for President Khama’s investments in the tourism industry are allowed the freedom to ‘sleep in grass huts’.”

Photo caption: Protestors handed out leaflets at the Fitur travel fair in Madrid and called on visitors to support Survival’s tourism boycott.

News Editor - TravelDailyNews Media Network | + Posts

Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.

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