Burma Campaign UK (BCUK) has several excellent articles and information pages about the whys and wherefores of tourism in Burma.  Basically, if you support the call for human rights and democracy in Burma then don’t go there – instead do something to help the suffering of the people of Burma by joining the BCUK campaign – and go on holiday somewhere else to make life difficult for the junta. 

For many years the junta has been promoting Burma as a tourist destination, and not surprisingly.  Burma is a splendid location, with spectacular scenery, wonderful beaches and coasts, beautiful plateaux, lowlands, hilly and mountainous areas, a rich and varied culture among one of the most ethnically diverse peoples on earth, a fascinating history and numerous sacred and archaeological sites – everything to entice the adventurous young, the well-seasoned traveller and the package tour group.  Everything has been made suitable for the modern traveller – as long as they don’t ask too many questions or want to travel about too independently.  The regime monitors the movements of tourists, interrogating any Burmese seen speaking to a tourist for too long, making certain areas off-limits so that tourists don’t see the reality of poverty, forced labour, extortion, unlawful killing or the whole gamut of human rights abuses by the junta. 

On another tack, the junta have a cash grab management technique.  They lack any sophistication when it comes to developing a tourist industry – they are arrogant enough to think that what they deliver up as counterfeit tourist sights will be swallowed by gullible tourists.  And they are ignorant enough about their own country and the worldwide tourist business to think that they can develop an industry in the same incompetent and brutalising manner that they do everything else.  They develop ‘ethnic villages’ where tourists can take snaps of ethnic people in their finest tribal ensembles, while further away in ‘no go’ areas, their soldiers are raping women, burning traditional villages and placing landmines in people’s homes.  Andrew Marshall tells the story of Lt.Gen. Kyaw Ba, when Minister of Tourism, was asked about ethnic minorities said “The only thing I know about ethnic minorities is how to kill them”.  Times don’t change much, as this is precisely what the junta are still doing now.

DASSK has repeatedly asked that tourists don’t visit Burma while the junta are in power – not just spite for being held under house arrest for over 11 years, but because tourism directly benefits the junta and because the tourist industry facilities have been built with considerable numbers of forced labourers – the air-conditioned hotels, roads, airports and other facilities essential for the modern tourist.  The junta benefit from tourism in huge financial gains.  Junta owned tourist companies provide package tours, hotels, air flights, ferries and other transportation.  What private accommodation is available will need to pay off junta officers just to stay in business, and some are owned privately by generals and other officers made wealthy on extortion and other involvement in illicit drugs trafficking and money-laundering.  No doubt, the generals and their cronies will also be taking their cut of the, albeit illegal, burgeoning sex industry mimicking the trade in neighbouring Thailand, grown through tourist money and local demand – an industry that thrives on poverty, naiveté and cruel exploitation of girls and boys, and young women and men. 

Tourism will be a fact of life for Burma for many years to come, whatever the progress of politics.  This isn’t a reason to give in and join the throng.  The Tourist industry in Burma will benefit a future democratic government as much as it does the Junta.  It is important that as part of our work as pro-democracy activists we ensure that those people who do go to Burma as tourists do get the correct information about life in Burma so that they can make an informed choice about how they travel there and what they do.  Ethical tourism is about the motivation and behaviour while on holiday as well as the decision to go or not. 

I have painted a no-to-tourism tableau.  There are other viewpoints that may be equally valid.  Thant Myint-U, (U Thant’s grandson) in ‘The River of Lost Footsteps’ says that sanctions, whether diplomatic or economic (e.g. tourism), will not succeed in toppling the regime - “Much more than any part of Burmese society,” he writes, “the army will weather another 40 years of isolation just fine.”  Social engagement via tourism lets in a little light to an otherwise gloomy future.  Lonely Planet (LP) defends their stance of marketing Burma with their travel guide claiming that tourists have the right to make up their own mind, and offering a somewhat pallid list of pros and cons of travelling to Burma as a tourist.  BCUK understand all of these issues and each argument for tourism is effectively countered, showing how the junta benefit and the people of Burma do not.  Each of us must of course read the differing arguments and make up our own mind about what to do – something that we can do and something that most of the people living in Burma cannot.  As British comedian Mark Thomas puts it in his invective article responding to LP, “You have to say that some human rights are of greater importance than others, like the right to live without torture and intimidation. The right to freedom of movement in the tourist sense – that’s got to be pretty low.”

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For further reading: _

¨       BCUK Say No to tourism campaign http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/aboutburma/tourism.html

¨       BCUK ‘dirty list’ of companies working with the junta http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/dirty_list_details.html

¨       ‘Room Service? Forced labour please’ http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/mtarticle.html

¨       Beyond Mandalay, the Road to Isolation and Xenophobia http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/books/13grim.html

¨       Viewpoints on Tourism from Free Burma http://www.ibiblio.org/freeburma/boycott/tourism/tourism.html

¨       Lonely Planet http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/asia/myanmar

¨       The Trouser People: A story of Burma in the shadow of the Empire.

       Andrew Marshall, Counterpoint (2002), ISBN 1-58243-120-5 http://www.amazon.com/TROUSER-PEOPLE-STORY-SHADOW-EMPIRE/dp/B00008NRH8

¨       The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma

      Thant Myint-U, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (December 12, 2006), ISBN: 0374163421 http://www.amazon.com/River-Lost-Footsteps-Histories-Burma/dp/0374163421