Travel bloggers and vloggers travelling to Syria have been accused of normalising President al-Assad’s regime while civilians on the ground remain unsafe.
Activist and journalist Fared al-Mahlool told the Guardian: “Syria will not be safe as long as Assad controls power.
“There are thousands of detainees in Assad’s prisons, poverty and unemployment. Whoever says that Syria is safe is a liar.”
Dozens of bloggers have visited the country in the last three years, with many racking up three or four million views on positive videos about exploring the country.
The Ministry of Tourism launched 25 new tourism projects at a conference in Damascus in October, according to the Guardian.
The ministry regularly posts to its Facebook page, showing ancient landmarks and Mediterranean coastline, with captions in English.
Spanish travel blogger Joan Torres, who has taken multiple trips to both Syria and Saudi Arabia and now organises his own tours to the former, told the Guardian: “I will not say anything bad about the government, of course, because I’m risking detention.
“In which country where you go often, where there’s no freedom of speech, would you start saying bad things about the government?”
Syria is still suffering the effects of a civil war which began in 2021, with an estimated 13 million people displaced from their homes and hundreds of thousands of civilians killed during the conflict.
The Foreign Office currently advises against all travel to the country, saying: “The situation in Syria remains volatile and dangerous owing to a decade of ongoing conflict and insecurity” and that “Daesh, formerly known as ISIL, continues to operate as an insurgency and conducts regular attacks”.
Mr Torres describes himself on Instagram as a “raw traveller, getting really off the beaten track”, and was promoting five-day small group tours to Syria, visiting areas such as Damascus, Bosra and Aleppo, as recently as July.
In 2019 he told the Daily Beast: “You receive a lot of emails and messages from people… [who] are really, really angry that [someone] went to Syria because it’s, like, supporting the government and it’s unethical.
“I don’t think there’s anything bad about it. I mean, I didn’t take selfies with destroyed buildings behind me.”
In August, British vloggers Benjamin Rich (known by his channel…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…