Manchester bombing: Why this heinous act of terrorism won't stop me travelling
If we allow terrorists to dampen our appetite for adventure we could inadvertently reward them
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Your support makes all the difference.Of all the risks that confront the traveller and the 21st-century world in general, terrorism is the most distressing.
While terror is nowhere near the biggest non-natural cause of death, it is the nastiest. There is nothing random about an act of terrorism, only the appalling consequences.
The pathetic bully, usually male, decides when to attack a soft target: firing an automatic weapon at holidaymakers at a Tunisian resort, accelerating into a crowd of tourists on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice or Westminster Bridge in London, or detonating a bomb as youngsters leave a pop concert in Manchester.
He knows nothing of the people he kills and maims, of their achievements and aspirations, and of the joy they bring to the world. He will never know the unfathomable sorrow his hatred causes to bereaved parents and children, classmates and colleagues, nor how many lives he devastates.
Terrorism is primitive, merciless and ultimately futile. As the people of Manchester have shown, any attempt to sabotage an open, tolerant and generous society will have the opposite effect: it brings people together.
A Union Flag with the message “Manchester we love you” now decorates the UK’s busiest tourism thoroughfare, between the London Eye and Parliament Square.
But Salman Abedi’s decision to squander his life and cause untold grief will affect the way some people travel.
The middle managers of the hatred industry recruit “useful idiots” such as Abedi to carry out mass murder. They exploit gullibility partly to win publicity for a hopeless ideology founded on intolerance, and also to try to impede the tide towards internationalism and understanding that is driven by the freedom to travel.
They may intimidate some prospective travellers into forsaking the chance to explore fresh destinations and meet new people. That is understandable. Every time there is a horrific terrorist atrocity, it heightens and broadens sensitivity to risk. Even tourism in Turkey and Egypt could suffer after the Manchester bomb, reminding potential visitors of the awful sequences of attacks in both countries.
The heartbreak of Manchester will also remind tourists of the brutality bestowed upon Paris and Nice, Brussels and Berlin over the past 18 months. Those fine cities are more welcoming than ever. But they may be taken off some travel itineraries for a time.
While the reality is that Europe is easily the world’s safest and most benign continent, right now it probably doesn’t look like that through the media coverage in Chicago or Shanghai. For some prospective tourists, this latest attack will reinforce the impression that Europe is a volatile danger zone.
But those who choose instead to reject the bullies will be rewarded with the warmest of welcomes across Europe, from Manchester to Istanbul.
Tourism is a force for good, benefiting the traveller and the host and enriching society. If we allow terrorists to dampen our appetite for adventure and discovery we could inadvertently reward them, allowing them to claim some sort of shallow victory. But I have no intention of being pushed around by perpetrators of hatred so grotesque that they are prepared to murder an eight-year-old girl. They must not prevail.
We will mourn all the victims of the Manchester attack. Their smiles, sparkling eyes and goodness have been lost to the world forever.
Let us honour their tragically brief lives by opening up to the world and its wonders.
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