What is dark tourism?

Dark tourism, also known as black tourism, morbid tourism, thana tourism, and grief tourism, is the tourism that includes visiting historical places related to death and grief. One of the reasons for the attraction of this kind of tourism is the value history of these places rather than its relation to death and suffering. Dark tourism deals with the philosophic interrogation on death. The visitors of these places explain that they care about others’ suffering.

Benefits of this kind of tourism

Social benefits

Dark tourism helps in increasing the local community income and rebuilding places which are affected by the tragedy. Tourism contributes to the improvement of education and infrastructure. Some people think that dark tourism doesn’t get money for the local community, but it indeed helps in getting money to the local community and it helps to improve those poor people’s life to raise their standard of living. They can improve their organic and handcrafted products. There are restaurants, hotels, and cafes that bring money. Jobs can be created through this kind of tourism, which greatly contributes to refreshing the country’s economy. Dark tourism helps in enhancing communication skills between the visitors and the local community and clear away language barriers

Learning benefits

Dark tourism helps to share awareness about terrifying accidents and what occurred in the whole world in the past. It provides the local community with wider knowledge about the history of ghosts, crimes, and wars which creates more interaction with visitors. Children know more about history as warriors in wars and their sacrifices for their country. Viewing the dark side of history and humanity widens the world history. The truth of some stories or tragedies can only be heard from their descendant or blood family. It will help to promote dark tourism involving cultural society. If there is no dark tourism, these sites will disappear and we‘ll lose history.

Bad sides of dark tourism

Some see that dark tourism may cause human suffering for tourists to earn more money. Some dark tourist sites are designed for the purpose of gaining money rather than education and knowledge, which could be seen as disrespect to the victims and exploitation. Dark tourism may cause misinformation that some sites are presented in a biased way for political purposes. Some dark tourism sites water down part of the history to appeal to the site with visitors. Also, various war sites focus on honoring the soldiers rather than reminding of the horror of war, others make the opposite, focusing on dramatic exaggeration to satisfy some visitors.

The crash of flight 764

It was a national tragedy of the highest order and is still remembered bitterly. Flight no. 764 was a regular passenger flight fly from Amsterdam to Suriname, it was expected to land in the early hours of 7th June 1989 after 12 hours of transatlantic flight. The Surinam Airways plane was a 20-year-old McDonnell Douglas DC-8, which already had issues in the past. But the cause of the crash wasn’t a technical issue in the plane, the cause was the crew. The pilot was 66 years old while Suriname airlines’ regulations prevent any pilot over 60 to fly. The co-pilot has false identity papers. The plane received warnings about inappropriate sight due to the fog from the tower at Zanderij International Airport in Suriname (now called Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport, JAPI). The captain activated the plane’s instrument landing system and during the landing procedure the plane hit the tree with the wings.

The plane hit the ground and crashed, most of the 187 passengers died including all the crew members. Only 11 passengers and one dog survived. Also, on board was a football team called “Kleurrijk Elftal“, which was put together by Dutch-Surinamese players and was a part of a charity exhibition. Only three of 18 members survived. This disaster was considered a national tragedy. The debris from the plane was buried and in a big hole and a modest momentum was made to mark the place. Another momentum was erected at a cemetery in Paramaribo. The crash site is to the west of Suriname’s international airport’s (JAPI) runway, less than 2 miles (3 km) from it, on the north side of the JFK Highway, a good 35 miles (50 km) from downtown Paramaribo by road. The other monument is at Rusthof cemetery, which is on the south side of Jaggernath Lachmon Straat in the southwest of Paramaribo.

Sources:

• https://www.dark-tourism.com/
• https://wheretheroadforks.com/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/
• https://knepublishing.com/
• https://theconversation.com/ (Cover Photo)