Foreign Office issues warning to Britons against travel to Bali
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Your support makes all the difference.The Foreign Office advised British nationals last night not to travel to Bali after Saturday's bomb attacks.
The island has become a popular destination for British and other Western tourists. The Association of British Travel Agents said about a thousand British holidaymakers were currently there.
An Abta spokesman said many were on round-the-world tickets and will continue to their next destination "earlier than they otherwise would ... amazingly some people didn't know what had happened".
The long-haul travel company Kuoni said it had around 400 clients in Bali and all had been accounted for. "Our people are going around to talk to all our holidaymakers and tell them what has happened. At the moment they are just checking with them about the situation and we don't know yet if any will be coming home".
Travellers were warned against going to Indonesia after the attacks of 11 September, although Bali was considered safe. Now the island has been wiped off the map as a tourist destination, just like Peru, Yemen and Sri Lanka before it.
For any developing country, tourism is an attractive industry. It is labour-intensive, demands little capital investment and earns foreign currency. For any group with a grievance and guns targeting tourists is an effective strategy. People on holiday constitute the softest of targets: they stand out and are off their guard.
Peru's Maoist insurgents, the Shining Path, led the way in treating tourists as targets in the 1980s. At its worst, the tourist industry shrank to one-20th of its size prior to 1980.
The strategy spread during the Nineties. Islamic militants in Egypt began targeting tour groups in 1992, culminating with the massacre at Hatshepsut's Temple in 1997, when 71 tourists were killed.
Visitors have also been attacked and killed in Turkey, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Malaysia, the Philippines, Yemen and Tunisia. Lately, the Basque separatist group Eta has capitalised on the harm to Spain's economy that can be achieved by targeting resorts.
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