After recent developments does anyone still think it’s OK to visit Burma as a tourist?
I’m afraid that, due to my incompetence, I was unable to locate the quotes Hanno used in his posting above so I’m not sure about the context in which they were made. However, a quick look at the website of pro-democracy Burmese campaigners (e.g.
www.burmacampaign.org.uk) make it abundantly clear that she, and other reputable groups, still support a boycott.
From such sources it is clear that the ruling junta in Burma wants more tourists to come to Burma for the hard currency they bring (which is disproportionately spent on the organs of repression) . They also hope that a large influx of international tourists will give them a veneer of respectability and credibility for a military dictatorship with one of the world's worst human rights records. Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD and Burma’s exiled government have all asked tourists not to visit Burma. In 1995, for example, Aung San Suu Kyi told visitors that "… it is too early for either tourists or investment or aid to come pouring into Burma…" and that she “… would like to see that these things are conditional on genuine progress towards democratization." This was reiterated in 2002 when she said: ""Our policy with regard to tourism has not changed, which is say that we have not yet come to the point where we encourage people to come to Burma as tourists." She has also stated that the junta's efforts to attract tourists "is responsible for a lot of forced labour….." Tourism in Burma provides the dictatorship with millions of pounds every year. Far from helping the situation, there is clear evidence that the development of tourism has escalated human rights abuses.
Many thousands of Burmese people have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for tourist projects. Many of the roads and railways that tourists travel on or the airports they pass through, have been built using forced labour. More than one million people have been forced out of their homes in order to ‘beautify’ cities, suppress dissent, and to make way for tourism developments, such as hotels, airports and golf courses (see the above site for details). To take but one example - in 2001 US State Department reported that in Mrauk U, a popular site of ancient temple ruins, “the government used forced labour to prepare the city for expected tourist arrivals.” This position, that is boycotting tourism in Burma, is backed by most (all?) democratic governments – in February 2004 UK Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien said that "because there are kickbacks and investments by generals in hotels and other parts of the tourism industry, people who go on tourist trips to Burma are in a sense actively supporting the regime and enabling those generals to receive financial advantage from it.”
Naturally, those in the tourist trade argue that such a boycott would harm ordinary Burmese people and sometimes claim that such a move is counter to what the Burmese themselves want. The fact is a very small percentage of ordinary people in Burma benefit from tourism. The uncomfortable reality is that the greatest obstacle to prosperity for people in Burma is the regime itself – which is clearly using tourism to its own ends. The Observer newspaper reported in 2003 that "…. the military junta and their cronies are benefiting directly from recent tourism developments. A list of owners of the hotel plots at the newest beach resort in the country, Ngwesaung, reads like a Who's Who of generals and their cronies". Support tourism and you support the regime. There is simply no way to operate in Burma or holiday in the country without providing income to the regime. The claim that the people of Burma do not want such a boycott seems to come from those who promote tourism in that country or whose contact with the Burmese is largely through those who work in the industry (e.g. hotel owners). It’s difficult to know what the Burmese people actually want regarding tourism - and their government clearly doesn’t intend to ask them – but the call for a boycott comes from Burma’s elected leaders. Some argue that the mere presence of tourists will, by some mysterious process of osmosis, help democracy and also prevent abuse. Aung San Suu Kyi has said, of such an argument, that “Burmese people know their own problems better than anyone else. They know what they want - they want democracy - and many have died for it. To suggest that there’s anything new that tourists can teach the people of Burma about their own situation is not simply patronising - it’s also racist.” Although the final comment may overstate the case, it's abundantly clear that she does not want the development of tourism under the current regime.
A couple of final points. Hanno implies that, because I live far from Burma, I am unqualified to write about the issue. Not so. A close family member spent many moths working in a Burmese refugee camp where the residents left them in no doubt as to both the vileness of the regime and that they, ordinary Burmese people, did not want tourists to visit their country. He also suggested that if you boycott Burma then you would also have to boycott many others countries. Each case has to be judged individually and there are certainly many other countries I would think hard and long about before visiting them as a tourist. Burma’s situation is, though, unique. The Burmese regime’s abuse of human rights is directly connected to the tourist industry and the generals and their cronies are the biggest beneficiaries of tourism which is helping sustain an illegitimate regime. Unlike other countries, Burma has a democratically elected government which has specifically asked all tourists to stay away,
John