_ By Min Khin Kyaw

Tourism to Burma – shouldn’t be anything but informing people. People of Burma who need to know and become aware of international values, democracy as it is, the values of being free and full of rights should be helped. They must know how human rights are, how they should have their rights and freedoms and how they can achieve by doing the right thing that do not hurt themselves. Good tourism can serve as messenger of good will also.

Economy is on the other hand can make the majority to be more righteous and able to care for each others so good tourism is good to go on. Tourism to a war-torn country ruled by brutal dictators has more responsibility to do good for the people, their conditions and the environments they live in; they must keep informing people with news, ideology and sharing the experience in the process to development. The tourists should do one more thing as well that they share information with other visitors.

But wealth can divide people. The poor tend to look at the rich with envy and the rich to look down the poor indifferently. The ones who become better off as they have had good economy, including tourism, can be looked with hatred by the ever-envious authority who never have had enough salary but no choice in life and no idea about how to getting-better-off by doing just right. Corruption and bribery have been obvious symptoms of Burmese bureaucracy – they even have infested outside Burma – such as Singapore where Burmese embassy collects taxes from the Burmese. When the people receive income from tourism, they might become some kind of targets for both criminals and the authority serving the criminals.

The Burmese authorities or bureaucracy is simply never working for the interests of the people but they only serve for themselves their wellbeing. They have taken various positions to feed their families – not for serving people. And nobody but them and their relatives only can have these various positions supposed to serve the country. They took such and such projects but to be rich whilst forcing people to work for their projects with no pay – not even a meal.

If one can starve half a day, one can take the rotten bottom-most jobs – and corrupt to survive.

What are such and such ministers for and such as such institutions doing what they’re doing? Nobody can ask them why they did what they did, nobody can inform them what going wrong, let it be as they have no humanity left in their hearts.

Actually, they’re the one to rise up first as seeing they’re the ones causing the sufferings of the people and themselves. They must know they’re the ones keeping the sufferings of all Burmese people inside and abroad. But don’t they know this? If not, why? It must be because they’re the horse soaked in the river but not drinking any way. It must be because they’re kind of ostriches buried their heads in the sand – though real ostriches never bury their heads in the sand or they’d choke to dead. In this sense, the Burmese bureaucracy is a zombie haunting Burma.

If tourism to Burma serves this kind of bureaucracy, how should we treat it? Otherwise, it must be admirable. As various companies in Burma are mainly working with such and such sectors of administrations, as all the incomes go to these ministers, and these incomes are used against the people of Burma, we oppose them and all humans must oppose them too. If these companies want to argue how the people are well because of income they make, let us say ‘don’t be gullible’.

Poverty can disable them. No education means no kindness and no humanness. This is where a society has to emphasize its effort to improve itself. All children must have some kind of education on humanity at least. Naturally, only good education serves the society. The visitors can chat with children or anybody on this issue and the visitors themselves can understand the condition of humanity inside Burma.

The mixture of the rich and the poor in Burma never really serve a good work together specially recently as they never really mixed that the division is there. Charity can get them together to be close as one people one family but this is not the case in Burma where the authority restrict any good-will activity. Can the tourists do this by taking up the social works and picking up social responsibility; this might give way for some Burmese with good-will to do what are good by hiding behind or working alongside with their tourist friends? If a tourist puts a cent into the tiny hand of a hungry child when found, it is an invaluable help; but the child may be hungry for food, education or some kind of relief from the burden of life being in Burma. Certainly this can’t be solved by one visitor but rather by many if each visitor be a little dutiful, it‘d become a phenomenon.

Already the backbone of humanness in Burmese society is broken. For So long people have become self-centred because of fear of poverty and the pressure of the unreasonable authority. They have to stand aside when the authority takes somebody away although the fate is always predictable. Nobody is ready to interfere into what the authority are carrying out, as they dare not trust others. On the other hand, 1988 event has proved we Burmese must know how to handle such thing to lead to a better condition but the undermining authority or the military will get the better chance anyway. And also people must be concerned about the USDA the organization of the thugs – the visitors must also know about them well. This is where a foreigner can do something very special for them.

The knowledgeable with good mindset care for others before themselves. Knowledge about human kind, humanity and human feelings is very special to human behaviour. Knowledge about other creatures, their sufferings and their needs can change people’s ways of thinking. It’s therefore precious to be working for others, fulfilling their needs and educating them with good ideology and understanding.

As we know, whether they’ve finished many degrees, if they can’t share a piece of their heart, they’d care nothing about humanity – they’re uneducated; they haven’t digested good nutrition into their hearts. This is how between the Burmese authority and ordinary Burmese people. The worst thing happening in Burma is brainwashing the new recruits with hatred and self-centeredness to become as inhumane as possible with the purpose of complete control over them for using them in any kind of dirty works serving the interests of the dirtiest.

Every visitor to Burma must be aware of all these – the conditions under a brutal dictator. The responsibility of we activists is to inform the visitors to be good visitors to do a few things as good will for humanity. Unless there is good will, there will be no good events, no good process, no good ending. Certainly, only the tourists with good will would enjoy good experience to remember lifelong, to be proud of and live with enthusiasm. A good work for humanity, how small it is, has a great deal of joy. And here there is no envy against each other. Tourists themselves can interview one another as it’s certainly a difficult work for us activists.

I want to suggest a website for the visitors to Burma where they can write their experience without fear of damnation. What the activists have to do is to let the tourists know the website and to write their experience willingly. It’d be like surveying the tourism of Burma. The website should inform human rights and freedom as well. The tourists have to know how and how long the people have suffered. The various experiences of the tourists concerned to residents, dissidents, authority, economy, education, etc will be a helpful tool for decisions and actions for democracy to Burma.

The People of Burma know the national convention of the SPDC is just for SPDC, not for them. The People of Burma know the international companies working in Burma are just for these companies and SPDC, but not for them. The people of Burma know they have all the rights as being human kind, but the right to practice their political and social rights is severely restricted, controlled or removed. The people of Burma want freedoms and rights. I know this because I’m a Burmese, I’m a Mon and I was born there and lived there until 1990.

We’ve requested these companies to leave Burma but they never listened. Why? Because they’re simply after money self interest. Should income from tourism go to the dirty hand of the SPDC, not into the tiny hands of hungry children? As tourism doesn’t belong to the big corporations completely but it’s in the hand of individual tourists, let me convince you therefore,

Tourism to Burma must be democracy to Burma. Otherwise, please, don’t visit!