A recently introduced scheme by South Africa, aimed at facilitating tourists from the non-visa exempt countries, has received warm welcome from the country's hospitality industry for its potential to attract more clients from these countries, thereby boosting the county's tourism market and contributing to its economic development.
South Africa is launching a new Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) starting January 2025 to facilitate tourists from the non-visa exempt countries, the Department of Home Affairs announced on Sept. 2.
The department said in a statement that red tape will be removed, and visa processing efficiency will be enhanced for tourists from non-visa exempt countries such as China and India.
According to the statement, Chinese tourists made over 100 million outbound trips in 2023, but South Africa only received 93,000 of those arrivals. Therefore, the South African government aims to change this situation through the scheme.
"We've got massive potential in terms of growing our tourism market from a country like China. At the moment, we are really under-performing and from the research that we've conducted and that we know from the tourism side as well, a lot of the blockage has to do with the red tape that is actually put in place of Chinese tourists and visitors to South Africa. So, in terms of the scheme itself, the goal here is basically to facilitate less red tape for Chinese tourists and specifically also to make it easier for large tour groups to come and visit South Africa," said South African Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber,
The scheme has been warmly embraced by the hospitality industry in South Africa.
"We (are) doing inbound tour which means we bring tourists from China to South Africa and our main market is the business delegations and exhibition groups. Also, we do customized leisure groups. If the visa application process can be efficient and simplified, then definitely it will attract much, much more clients from China," said Angela Wu, director of the travel service department at upGrowth, a marketing company in South Africa.
"So, we know, particularly the Chinese market, they love to travel in with tourists. So, that's very positive. Up to date, our visa system has made it so difficult for Chinese and Indian tourists to visit South Africa. It's just incomprehensible considering that China and India are our major BRICS partners," said Rosemary Anderson, national chair of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa.
Tourism is a significant contributor to South Africa's economy. Research has indicated that increasing tourism by 10 percent annually can boost annual economic growth by 0.6 percent and generate numerous new job opportunities for South African people.
South Africa's hospitality sector welcomes new travel facilitation scheme
Japanese Army Unit 731, a biological and chemical warfare unit stationed in northeast China during World War II, had a strict evaluation and assessment system for technicians, allowing those who conducted live human experiments to be promoted, according to a newly discovered document of the notorious unit.
The new document was disclosed by Japanese scholar Seiya Matsuno, a specially-appointed professor at Heilongjiang International University, in September ahead of the 93rd anniversary of the September 18 Incident of 1931. The archive is important evidence for deepening the research on Japan's bacterial warfare system and is of great significance to fully exposing Japan's biological warfare crimes.
The September 18 Incident of 1931 taking place in the city of Shenyang in northeast China was a precursor to Japan’s launch of a full-scale invasion of China, and a key event ahead of the outbreak of World War Two in Asia.
The new files include the evaluation forms of Unit 731 technicians. On these forms, red words such as "excellent" and "good" are marked. For example, Yoshimura Hisato，a war criminal and leader of the unit’s frostbite study squad, has four "excellent" and one "good" ratings. During this period, Hisato compiled the relevant content of the experiments conducted in Unit 731 into a paper and published it in Japan.
"This paper is a confidential document written by Yoshimura Hisato, a technician with Unit 731, about frostbite. It was published on October 26, 1941. There is a table called Experiment 5, which contains the frostbite resistance index of people under various living conditions. The subjects are marked with ABCDE, and then the data of frostbite resistance indexes are counted under various living conditions, such as soaking in cold water, soaking in warm water, fasting for two days, fasting for three days, and the subjects staying awake day and night. Such data obtained through live human experiments can be seen everywhere in the paper," said Tan Tian, researcher at the exhibition hall of evidence of crimes of Unit 731 in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
According to staff from the International Research Center of Unit 731 under the Harbin Academy of Social Sciences, Hisato joined Unit 731 in March 1938 as a sixth-class technician. While conducting frostbite research and experiments, he was also responsible for the management of the special prison where the subjects were detained, making him a researcher as well as a core secrets administrator of the of Unit 731. He was promoted to the rank of fourth-class technician in October 1942.
"From the perspective of Yoshimura Hisato, he joined Unit 731 in 1938 and completed a three-step career jump in less than four years until 1942. Lying behind such fruitful achievements were the bloody live human experiments he made. Yoshimura Hisato published at least 200 medical papers in his career. The Japanese medical community tacitly approved the anti-human atrocities and human experiments of Unit 731, which further reflects the organized nature of these crimes," said Gong Wenjing, director of the International Research Center of Unit 731 under Harbin Academy of Social Sciences.
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing in China during World War II. The unit is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. It was based in the Pingfang District of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China, formerly named Manchuria) and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.
Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese aggressor troops. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs". Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hypobaric pressure chamber testing, vivisection, organ procurement, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women) and children but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound.
Newly discovered document exposes evaluation system of technicians under wartime Japan's germ warfare unit
