Avoid Booking.Com

Readers Mail….
From A.A. Wisley….

An angry boycott of Booking.Com, is growing worldwide after its baseless claim that there is a risk to human rights for visitors to Northern Cyprus. This, I think, could prove expensive for it especially if it is sued by the North Cyprus hoteliers.

Northern Cyprus is not on the list of countries where there is a risk to human rights abuse. Southern, Greek, Cyprus is on the list. There are, currently, cases before the ECHR against the South relating to uninvestigated rapes and beatings of tourists.

Interestingly, the Booking.Com website does not carry any similar warning (click here) for any of the top 20 countries with the worst human rights records in the world including China (No. 3), Egypt (4) CAR (6) Sudan (10) Russia (12). So, you can enquire about travel to the IK-3 penal colony, where Alexei Navalny was murdered, or the Uighar city of Ürümqi in China, without being notified of any travel or human rights risks. To be fair to Booking.Com they do not have any currently available accommodation in some of these countries or IK-3 but there are many other places in Russia and China, for example, to choose from.

Curious too is the fact that other Booking.Com owned companies, Kayak and Kiwi for example, do not issue any such warning about North Cyprus.

End Embargoes

The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that, somehow, Booking.Com has caved in to pressure from the Greek Cypriot Administration, despite its history of ethnic cleansing, due to its forceful, even abusive, lobbying, in its continuing efforts to damage the economy of North Cyprus. One reason is that the North’s tourist business is now booming with a large number of tourists “leaking” across the border from the South. The loss of vital tourist revenue is happening at the same time as the massive, multi $ billion per year, money laundering industry closely connected to Vladimir Putin,(click here ) on which the South relies, is also under international pressure. This is typical of the behaviour of a regime which has no legal or moral legitimacy, other than its right to govern the Greek Cypriots living in the southern part of the island.

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Photographs courtesy of Ismail Veli from an article by Mr John L Oakes

It is because of this blatant blindness to the truth and the astonishing support for a, de facto, embargo by Booking.Com against Northern Cyprus that, people throughout the world, especially amongst the Cypriot diaspora, are refusing to make their travel and holiday bookings through Booking.Com. Join them to make this boycott successful and expensive for a company that seems to have few scruples. It is happy to deal with murderous regimes like China, Russia and the genocidal Greek Cypriot regime but not with victims like North Cyprus.

To read a little more on the destruction of the Cypriot State by the Greek Cypriots click  here.

Editors Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by CyprusScene.Com