Population Conference Gives Boost To Egyptian Tourism

By James J. Napoli

A few days after the U.N. international population conference ended in Cairo this September, Cable News Network (CNN) International ran a story suggesting that foreign tourism in Egypt could well benefit from the gathering.

It was a "soft" piece with no facts to get in the way of the vaguely optimistic impression it was meant to leave on viewers. And who's to gainsay its conclusion?

Some 3,500 delegates from 189 countries gathered to hear around 250 speakers, including U.S. Vice President Al Gore, on issues of population planning and the condition of women. It was the fifth International Conference on Population and Development—unofficially dubbed "Pop-Con"—and the first to be held in Africa or the Middle East.

Despite dire predictions that the conference would be the focus of attack by Islamic militants, there were no violent incidents. Security was as intense as has ever been seen in this security-conscious city. And, although there were fatal terrorist attacks involving foreigners in Upper Egypt before and after the conference, they were not enough to disturb the general satisfaction among Egyptian government officials.

"I am extremely pleased with the way this conference has turned out," declared Dr. Nafis Sadik, the conference secretary general.

Tourism officials also were pleased—and Egyptians bemused—by the relatively spiffy Cairo that the conference participants encountered. Before their arrival, government workers were out in force paving streets, removing piles of rubbish, painting the curbs, repairing water and sewer lines, and putting up or fixing traffic signs.

Dapper armies of newly trained traffic police officers were enforcing traffic rules and handing out tickets liberally to scofflaws, who, in Cairo, include just about everyone. Even pedestrians were made to toe the white lines—or else—to enhance the positive impression the city made on the conferees.

Sonia Guirguis, director general of tourist relations for the Egyptian Tourist Authority, told the Washington Report that government officials were hopeful that absence of security problems and the evidence that Egypt could successfully organize a major international conference would encourage others to visit.

Added boosts should come shortly after the conference with scheduled meetings of the American Society of Travel Agents and the U.S. Tour Operators Association, she said. An Italian opera production of "Aida" also is scheduled for Luxor in November.

Tourism, one of Egypt's biggest sources of foreign currency, has suffered heavily in the past few years because of a spate of terrorist shootings and bombings, particularly in Upper Egypt. The number of foreign tourists plunged from 3.2 mllion in 1992 to about 2.5 million in 1993.

Participants encountered a relatively spiffy Cairo.

But there is evidence of recovery this year, Guirguis said. The first six months of 1994 have brought about 1.5 million tourists to Egypt. Resorts along the Red Sea and South Sinai are booked, or nearly booked, for the fall, or were prior to the recent killing of a German tourist at a Red Sea resort. These are frequented mainly by sunbathers and divers, who may agree with Egyptians that this incident, far from regions associated with religious radicalism, seems to be an aberration.

The worst hit areas are those along the classical, Pharaonic tourist route, from Cairo to Luxor and Aswan, she said. Hotel bookings are improving somewhat compared to last year, but many Nile cruise ships are still sitting empty along the river banks.

The fragility of the tourist recovery helps account in some measure for the almost neurotic sensitivity among Egyptians about the "image" of Egypt projected abroad. "It only takes one [terrorist] incident to ruin the whole thing," Guirguis said.

But the concern extends beyond terrorist incidents to any story written or beamed to the rest of the world that might tend to put Egypt in a bad light.

The rose-tinted CNN story on the Population Conference's possible stimulus of tourism followed two tough reports on "circumcision"—more accurately, genital mutilation—of young females in Egypt. The fact that discussion of the practice was on the Pop-Con agenda and that more than 80 percent of the female population are "circumcised" in Egypt would seem to warrant news coverage during the conference. But the stories raised a storm of outrage from President Mubarak on down.

The first piece showed a 10-year-old girl undergoing the operation in arguably sensational detail: many Egyptians found it exploitative and brutal. The second showed President Mubarak commenting during an interview that the practice had greatly diminished, which seemed disingenuous in light of the earlier story. The practice may be diminishing, but it still is far too widespread to be lightly dismissed.

Tarnishing Egypt's Image

Yet the national and opposition press unloosed near hysterical tirades not against the practice of circumcision, but against CNN for the damage it supposedly did to Egypt's image by running a crude, tasteless and negative story.

One story in the English-language Egyptian Gazette was headlined "CNN—Circumcision News Nuts" and began: "In an inexplicable move, the international cable network, CNN, plotted to damage Egypt's image during the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD, by running footage of a young Egyptian girl being circumcised. With deliberate malice, the CNN began its disgusting crime when its officials recruited an Egyptian teacher passing as a camerawoman. They asked her to create a scene hitting hard at the country's image while the ICPD was in full swing."

Six people—the girl's father, a man who had allegedly talked to the father about permitting the shoot, two men who performed the operation, an Egyptian woman working for CNN and her aunt—were arrested and detained by police.

The woman who helped make the contacts for CNN, a free-lance journalist named Nivine Hamdan, was subjected to relentless attacks in the press, often with the facts balled up. The government newspaper Al-Akhbar, for example, reported that Hamdan photographed the mutilation, although she maintains she was not present at the operation, had never met the family and had no role in filming or editing the story. Her version has not appeared in the local press.

Hamdan, who was released without bail, is subject to rearrest under an Egyptian law that makes it illegal to tarnish the reputation of Egypt. She could face prison for serving as an intermediary, or fixer, for a story that officials believe damaged Egypt's image.

The image problem for Egypt was, however, compounded by stories churned out by some of the hundreds of foreign journalists attending the conference about the arrest of a colleague for something as nebulous as image damage in a self-described democracy.

Ironically, Health Minister Ali Abdel Fatah spoke out forcefully against female circumcision after the CNN stories and announced that the first nationwide conference on the practice would be held later this year.

James J. Napoli chairs the department of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo.