China has launched a campaign to attract 3 million tourists to Tibet this year, after deadly unrest saw a huge drop-off in visitors last year, state media reported yesterday.
The government’s target is up from the 2.2 million tourists who visited the remote Himalayan region last year, but is still well down on the more than 4 million who traveled there in 2007, according to the Xinhua news agency.
UNREST
Unrest broke out in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on March 14 after four days of peaceful protests against 57 years of Chinese rule. The government immediately sealed off the region to tourists.
Authorities only allowed foreign tourists back in at the end of June.
The devastating earthquake in neighboring Sichuan Province in May, which caused a dramatic fall in tourists visiting there, also had an impact on Tibet’s tourism industry, Xinhua said.
Xinhua said that the Tibetan government’s campaign to lure three million visitors this year involved paying for a “bonus fund” for tourist operators, as well as stepped-up promotion activities.
The aim of the government’s campaign is to “restore the safe, civilized and healthy image of Tibet as a tourist destination,” Xinhua said.
Xinhua gave no other details about the fund or other incentives, or whether the efforts would target foreigners as well as domestic tourists.
50 MILLION YUAN
However, a report last week from the state-run Tibet Business News said local authorities had earmarked 50 million yuan (US$7.3 million) this year to pay for ad campaigns.
It also planned to invest 350 million yuan during this year and next year to improve tourist infrastructure in the region such as road signs, transport hubs and toilets, the report said.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the