GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – A local tour operator is making plans to turn the site of the Jonestown massacre into a travel destination, four decades after it was the scene of the most notorious mass suicide in modern history.
According to Roselyn Sewcharran, the owner and founder of Wanderlust Adventures, the first group of tourists is already scheduled to visit the site, located to the south of Georgetown in January.
“It offers critical lessons about cult psychology, manipulation and abuse of power,“ Sewcharran said.
With the support of the Guyanese government, Sewcharran will take small tour groups to what once was Jonestown, a commune settled by American Jim Jones and hundreds of his followers.
It was the site of the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which more than 900 people, including hundreds of children, died after Jones ordered them to drink cyanide mixed with a fruit-flavoured beverage.
The guided visit will also take travelers from the capital, Georgetown to the Port Kaituma airport, where on the day of the massacre U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and two members of the US network, NBC — reporter Don Harris and cameraman Bob Brown — were among those shot and killed as they attempted to board their plane home.
But according to a report published by NBC News, despite the rise in popularity of “dark tourism”, a term describing travellers visiting locations associated with death and tragedy, some in Guyana are sceptical about the tour that will take visitors to such a morbid site.
“It clearly appeared as if there was a lot of illegal activity going on there, human rights violations, food/sleep deprivation, forced imprisonment and the images were pretty gory, reprehensible,” said Neville Bissember, a Senior lecturer at the University of Guyana. “People would prefer not to remember.”