11 August 2016
What You Get Up to Next Summer
Somebody will know.
by Neil Tidmarsh
Here we are in high summer. Mid-August. The time of year when international relations are at their most strained. Diplomats and politicians are working right round the clock to defuse a continuous stream of unsavoury and dangerous incidents, any one of which might trigger a fully-blown conflict between formerly friendly nations.
Why? Because the world and his wife and children are abroad on holiday. You and me, law-abiding citizens for eleven and a half months of the year, we escape for two weeks – two weeks of excitement which we’ve been saving up for and looking forward to all year – and the sun and the sea and the booze and the ready cash and the freedom of being far from home, far from anyone who knows us, is a bit too much, isn’t it? What follows? Temporary madness, a period of Saturnalia. Don’t deny it. I know what you got up to last summer. You were lucky to get away with it. And as for me, well, I’ll never forget that episode in Paris in 1979. Or in Rome in 1980. Even though I wasn’t caught.
The point this week is that we probably won’t get away with it if we go to Thailand next summer. The military junta is proposing to issue location-tracking Sim cards to the tens of millions of tourists who visit their country each year, according to a recent announcement by Thailand’s Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission.
An anti-terrorism and anti-crime measure to protect national security and the tourists and tourism on which the country’s economy depends? Not quite. The commission’s secretary general Takorn Tantasith explained that the initiative is designed to catch foreign criminals. “We could just facilitate the police” he said, “so they could more easily track foreigners who enter the country and commit crimes. The function is not in the Sim cards for Thais because we can always easily track them.” He explained that the police would need a court order before tracking a foreigner via the Sim card in his phone, and that it would only work with Sim cards bought inside the country. But we have been warned.
The Chinese authorities have also been doing their best to tackle the problem. They’re anxious that their tourists don’t let their country down as more and more of them go out to explore the rest of the world. Two years ago President Xi warned them to be on their best behaviour; “Do not litter water bottles everywhere” he told them. “Do not damage coral reefs. Eat less instant noodles and more local seafood.” The national tourism administration has just drawn up a blacklist of last year’s offenders, found guilty of such tourist crimes as “damaging public facilities or historical relics, ignoring social customs at tourist destinations, or becoming involved with gambling and prostitution”.
This week a draft regulation was released which would allow the blacklist to be consulted by Chinese tour companies, travel agencies and government bodies such as customs, quarantine and border control. There are only nineteen names on the blacklist so far, and the regulation is awaiting public comment and has not yet been passed, but it says that “punishments may be imposed” on those on the list “by travel agencies or other related agencies or organisations.” Punishments, presumably, to include a ban on taking a holiday abroad.
Mind you, another story in the news this week may well discourage even the most well-behaved Chinese tourist from holidaying abroad anyway. A 31 year old Chinese backpacker flew into Stuttgart airport at the beginning of last month. Some of his possessions were stolen and he promptly tried to report the theft. Unfortunately he couldn’t speak German and he was misunderstood. He was given a form to fill out. The form was a request for asylum – and for the next fortnight he found himself trapped in a refugee centre. Luckily, after two weeks, staff at the shelter realised something was wrong and asked a local Chinese restaurant to help. The restaurant staff acted as interpreters and all, I hope, ended happily ever after.
Almost as Kafka-esque as another story from China this week. A Mr Chen from the city of Guangzhou applied to the police for an official document stating that he had no criminal record. The application was refused, because the police said that he was a criminal and that he was dead; he had been executed in 2006, having been sentenced to death in 2003 for crimes (including kidnapping) committed in 2001.
It seems that there are (or were) two Mr Chens of Guangzhou, both somehow with the same national identification number. But as soon as the police realised the mistake, they issued the innocent Mr Chen with the document confirming that he had no criminal record and amended their files, removing the conviction and updating his status from “dead” to “alive”. Another happy-ever-after ending, I hope.
Nevertheless, I expect Mr Chen needs a holiday after all that. He certainly deserves one. After all, being the good Mr Chen, he’s bound to behave himself abroad.
I just hope that the bad Mr Chen didn’t get their name on that blacklist. And I hope that the good Mr Chen doesn’t find himself stranded in a refugee centre.
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