By NAN Travel Editor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. July 12, 2016: While developed nations like the U.S. Canada and the UK have been quick to issue travel alerts on developing nations, one Caribbean nation has flipped the script on the Mighty United States.
The Bahamas’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration is warning its citizens traveling to the United States to be wary of “recent tensions in some American cities over shootings of young black males by police officers.”
It urged nationals travelling to the U.S. to avoid crowds and demonstrations and warns young male Bahamians to specifically “exercise extreme caution in affected cities in their interactions with the police … Do not be confrontational and cooperate.”
The travel advisory comes on the heels of the fatal shootings of two black men last week in separate incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota, and after five police officers were killed and seven others were wounded by a shooter who opened fire during a rally in Dallas.
Generally, the U.S. State Department is quick to issue travel warnings for U.S. citizens heading abroad to countries where pockets of violence have erupted. In recent weeks U.S. citizens have been cautioned on traveling to Venezuela, South Sudan, Iraq, Bangladesh, Mali and Laos.
A warning of crime in The Bahamas by the U.S. that the “criminal threat level for New Providence Island (includes Nassau and Paradise Island) is rated as critical” and that “crime in Grand Bahama has increased this past year.”
“Armed robbery and sexual assault are major criminal threats facing U.S. citizens in New Providence,” the department warned. “The U.S. Embassy has received multiple reports indicating tourists have been robbed at gunpoint or knifepoint in tourist locations in the downtown areas of Nassau; several of these incidents occurred during daylight hours. The U.S. Embassy has received reports of sexual assaults in tourist areas as well. The Bahamas has one of the highest incidences of sexual assault in the Caribbean, according to 2012 United Nations report. The majority of sexual assaults reported occurred after excessive consumption of alcohol.”
