Many authoritarian and totalitarian countries in different continents use travel restrictions as a measure to control their dissidents and internal critics.
Citizens that do not bend to the official interests are frequently banned to travel abroad, and those who get through the system and do so will often be banned to come back.
Notably, travel bans are most common throughout the Middle East and most Muslim countries. The governments of Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates all impose them. Israel does not curb its own citizens but bans the free movement of Palestinians trying to travel abroad.
Travel bans are the norm for some former Soviet Republics, now independent, and for all Communist countries, even those making economic inroads in the path of capitalism, such as China and Vietnam. The worse cases are North Korea and Cuba where travel permits are required and are regularly denied to dissidents and members of opposition groups. Both countries also demand their citizens living abroad to obtain a re-entry permit to visit their own country as transients, seldom to stay, and usually deny this permit to those who they dislike or to those who visited dissidents on their previous visit, even if they were members of their family. Other countries such as Venezuela use less visible tactics such as limiting the amount of hard currency that dissidents or members of the opposition may carry in their travels abroad.
Through illegal under international law, the bans are generally applied with impunity. Under such pressure, some people prevented from traveling abroad in these countries finally give-up on their political activities or even end-up co-operating with the authorities to free themselves of the ban.
The bans have been for years an effective way to control people. Public protests are rare and outside interest is thin. This violation of human rights is never part of the agenda at the UN Human Rights Council. However, human rights activists are among the ones more often banned to travel in and out of these countries. And those receiving international recognition, such as the Nobel Peace Prize, recently granted to a Chinese Citizen, or the Sakharov Prize, recently granted to a Cuban dissident, are never allowed to travel to get their prizes.
Statistics are hard to come by since bans are usually issued by the country's opaque security agencies. And these agencies would never give an explanation of their decisions much less a written denial.
Topic Author
