Boycott Botswana, tourists urged

Planning a holiday in Botswana? Survival International – which campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights – would like you to go somewhere else. It has launched a global advertising drive highlighting Botswana’s persecution of Africa’s last hunting bushmen and urging tourists not to go there. Under the headline Discover the hidden secrets of Botswana, the ad spotlights Botswana’s use of glossy images of bushmen to attract tourists while at the same time using force to deport them from their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

The ad is being published in five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) and will be placed in travel magazines and newspapers worldwide. It urges tourists to join Survival’s boycott and not go to Botswana until the bushmen are allowed to live on their land in peace. More than 7,000 travellers and celebrities including Gillian Anderson and Joanna Lumley have already pledged not to visit Botswana, and three tourism companies have joined the boycott.

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