US STate Dept travel advisories & Iran

First: check out this portoflio

http://www.billzorn.com/iran/asleep_yazd.shtml

 

Just a note from personal experience: As an British and American

passport-holder, I have traveled extensively in the Mideast and N

Africa. Often, I have noticed how different the US State Department

travel advisories are compared to not just realities, but the travel

advisories issued by other countries (UK & Canada, for example.)

 

It seems to me that politics has a lot to do with it. This was most

obvious to me when I travelled to Egypt and later to Iran. The

harshest US State Department travel advisory, as you can guess, was

for Iran. The travel advisory for Egypt (a US ally) was much less

scary. This, despite the fact that Egypt was then the recent scene of

a tourist massacre, whilst I have yet to read anything about any

tourists being collectively shot in Iran (and yes, there were tourists

there -- I ran into Brits, Japanese, Koreans, and quite ironically, I

shared a meal with a guy from Michigan in Tehran in a chinese food

restaurant in Tehran! All the Iranians I met were extremely polite to me.)

 

Second, I think we tend to take this "is it safe" question too far.

People in many nations are much poorer than us, that's true. A single

camera may be more than what people in many countries can ever afford

to buy. But that doesn't necessarily make them more dangerous than

your local street thug. In fact, despite being poor, many of the se

countries have societies which are very close, familial, very "values

based" and where a lot of honor and respect is accorded to guests and

visitors in general. And whilst Americans assume that people in the

Mideast must "hate" them, in fact it was my experience that the

general people in Iran and Egypt did not confuse the US government

with ordinary Americans.

 

Of course, you have to show SOME cultural sensitivity, and take the

standard precautions...

Hi Aslan,

 

I lived in Iran for three years from 1970-73 as a kid. Of course my perspective then was

very different. I lived in the north of Teheran, and went to the TAS, Teheran American

School. My mother was very adventurous, and we took trips to the desert where we stayed

in the Caravanserai (stopovers for the old Camel Caravans). We travelled north to the

Caspian, and went skiing in the high mountains.

 

I very much want to return to Iran, and I appreciate you trying to clarify things with your

post. I also really enjoyed your photos. What are you shooting with, digital? The photos

look so clear.

The US State Dept. recently issued an advisoru for Paris for Heaven's sake! And people "bite" at it, as one recent thread proves. They should issue an advisory for many parts of US cities, IMHO, before places like Paris.

 

Our tax Dollars at work, pathetic.

advisory not advisoru.

 

Here's the link:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00E5Zt

Claude -- while I wish I could take credit for the Iran photos, they are not mine. They are Bill Zorn's. I noticed them first in Black-and-White magazine.

The advisories have always had a political element. It's much easier to look for the experience of other people (fodors.com has an excellent forum for researching this kind of information) who have traveled there recently. When I went to Vietnam, the advisories were filled with all sorts of warnings, probably because of Vietnam's communist government, that turned out to be ridiculous. Now that the US is on a more "friendly" basis with Vietnam, it's been toned down.

Go were you want.

 

Do want you want.

 

If you dispise/don't like the US govt warning on travel, then why do you even look at them?

 

You are intelligent people....just do it. And make sure you have a will prepared for your family.

 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

 

Good Luck.

Dear Aslan,

 

I completely agree about 'is it safe', but as a matter of interest, do you habitually travel on your US or UK passport, and do you find it makes much difference? My wife (who is in the same situation) normally uses her UK passport, not least because visas are often cheaper: many countries do 'tit for tat' visa prices and (for example) her Chinese visa in Paris was 30 euros (British) instead of 50 euros (American).

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

You want to disbelieve the travel advisories and believe the film safety advisories. One won't get you killed. Maybe the other won't either. After all, it's clear that when the President of Iran declared a desire to eliminate both Israel and the US recently, he meant it in a nice sort of way and probably not everyone there agrees with him.

Here is an Iranian-Canadian whose fairly recent photographic-politcal practices in Iran ended up in her being tortured, raped, and murdered by senior Iranian security staff...

 

http://www.zahrakazemi.com/

You hit the nail on the head. Politics is complicated stuff and the media - and sometimes the State Dept - tends to simplify it. Travel advisories are as politiczed as the terrorism advisories, which are useless.

 

It's all about culture, as you note. I've taken pictures in some rough neighborhoods in Kosovo and Turkey, among others, and never been worried. I sat in a mosque for hours in one of the poorest neighboorhoods of Istanbul and had one of the best days of my life. These are places with strong families and strong cultures. On the other hand, I've been stabbed in Norfolk, VA and beaten up at 8:00 AM on a sunny Sunday morning in Naples. You just can't predict it.

 

The fact is that the Iranian people are not virulently anti-American. The government is, but the people are not. They mostly hate their government and therefore feel some fondeness for America, although that attitude has been changing the last couple years. Much of the rest of the middle-East seems to be more dangerous than Iran.

Zahra Kazemi was the Iranian-Canadian photog who was killed in Iran after she was arrested for photographing a prison demonstration. The authorities there, as authorities everywhere, tried to cover it up and this caused a major ruckus in the government between various factions, as well as a diplomatic debacle between Iran and Canada.

 

But perhaps the greatest irony is that Zahra Kazemi's photographs ended up being censored in . . . Canada.

 

Yes, that's right. A posthumous display of her photographs in Canada on the topic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was shut down because they were deemed to be "too pro-Palestinian."

 

There's some irony for you.