Diana's View: Traveling Morally (7/13/2001)

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Traveling the world with a social conscience can be a challenge. Various political issues come up in almost every destination, from shopping for the goods that you know were produced in child-labor sweatshops to destroying places of natural beauty to make room for bigger resort hotels. And a lot of people object to visiting countries where documented, egregious violations of human rights are committed. One of the arguments for visiting places such as Tibet and China is that we should bear witness to the reality of the oppressed people there and bring those stories home. But there are several campaigns raging at the moment to keep us from spending our tourist dollars in support of violent, military regimes. And there is currently an outright cry to boycott Burma, specifically, where people have died in prison recently for such crimes as owning a fax machine.

One of our Savvy reporters will weigh in on the issue from Burma. And we will generally address the question of politically correct travel on this edition of the show: Should you and I travel with a social conscience? Should we forego travel to countries where human rights are repeatedly violated? That's at least part of the agenda, today on The Savvy Traveler.