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During the student political uprisings in Tiananmen Square the world’s media descended on China covering the incident from every conceivable angle, while totally ignoring a similar more brutal student struggle for democracy in Burma a year earlier.
Students clashed with Burma’s elite riot police, Lon Htein, on March 13, 1988, and then again five days later on what became known as “Bloody Friday”. Countless numbers were gunned down in cold blood as they marched on Sule Pagoda in Rangoon. Another 700,000 people fled Burma and two million were driven from their homes and now subsist in remote jungle areas. Torture and oppression continue in Burma to this day. None of this was televised. For the rest of the world these appalling massacres didn’t happen until John Boormans’ film, Beyond Rangoon, shocked the world and focused attention on these tragic events seven years later.
Suddenly Burma was no longer a dot on the map, but a country everyone wanted to know more about. But since 1962 when General Ne Win seized power in a coup d’etat the country has been cut off from the outside world and information is almost non -existent. Arriving in Rangoon from Bangkok means not only putting your watch back 30 minutes, it is like stepping into Orwell’s time travel machine and going back 30 years to a land untouched by western progress.
Until recently, travel was limited to a week, but visas have been extended to a month to coincide with the military government’s launch of “Visit Myanmar Year 1996”. Burma was renamed Myanmar by the military government in 1989, but the name is not internationally recognised. The dilemma for most people and tour operators is whether to go to Burma, with its appalling record of abusing human rights and democracy. Many compare Burma’s present military regime to South Africa and feel the same approach of economic sanctions and boycotts that worked in ending Apartheid would put pressure on the Burmese government to re-instate the rightful government, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
Her party captured 392 of the 485 seats in the 1990 elections. Despite her overwhelming victory the military refused to hand over power. Ne Win’s party, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) justified this because Aung San Suu Kyi is married to a foreigner, therefore state secrets were at risk.
The arguments for and against travelling to Burma are compelling and complex. But the indigenous people of Burma (as distinct from the generals and the politicians) firmly believe tourists are a key and do not want a tourism boycott. A fisherman on Inle Lake explained: “You can shut the door and feel personally good about boycotting Burma, but behind those closed doors, not seeing does not mean the atrocities don’t continue to happen. You, the visitor, by exploring our beautiful country make such abuses against human rights not only difficult, but also force world accountability onto the present regime.”
Intrepid, one of a small number of tour operators running trips in Burma, believe “it is patronising in the extreme not to consider the wishes of the local people in calling for a tourism boycott”. After some pilot trips they believe travelling to Burma is not wrong. “It is now actually the morally right thing for Intrepid to be doing, given that we conduct our trips in a non-government framework, using local private transport and accommodation,” an Intrepid spokesman said. “As a result the money spent goes into local pockets not those of the generals from SLORC. We do not expect everyone to agree with us that the time is right for travel in Burma. In the end we leave it to the individual choice made on the best information they have available to them. The individuals freedom to choose is a fundamental human right. It is what we are arguing for in Burma.”
Intrepid’s agents in Britain, Imaginative Traveller, believe tourism can result in cash flowing into the pockets of ordinary Burmese. For many years the Burmese have been unable to improve their standard of living without bowing to the corruption of the military system. As one private guest house owner explained: “It is hard to resist if you have nothing, we tried in 1988 and many of my friends are dead because of it. Burma is a prison without bars none of us can leave and no one can afford to do anything about it, but tourism brings new hope, money and new opportunities for my people.
“It gives us the economic power to resist and in turn our foreign visitors are like ambassadors telling the world what is really happening here. Tourists are our life line, because they present our case over and over again to the international community. “It is too simplistic to compare us to South Africa, which expelled the ANC who in turn acted as spokesmen for their cause. No one in Burma has been able to leave Burma, not even Aung San Suu Kyi. We have had no tourism for the last 30 years. All I can say is out of sight, out of mind.”
Most Burmese people feel the recent interaction with overseas visitors has been beneficial in two ways. Firstly in helping them recover economically instead of continuing to stagnate, but more importantly they no longer feel alone, isolated and abandoned. The people believe that international moral support is vital to real change, as once the door is opened to tourism, change is inevitable and, in Burma’s case, vital if it isn’t to be swallowed up by one of its neighbouring countries.
Travellers such as myself who have been to Burma leave with a greater understanding of the people and their daily problems. Their kindness and hospitality make even the most politically lazy take a more active role in human rights. The words in 1947 by Burmese Reverend U On Kin, District Methodist Church, Twante, remain valid: “I want to see Burma free from domination, free to manage her own affairs, free to develop in the way that best suits the genius of her people. This may seem to imply that I advocate absolute and complete independence.
“But now-a-days such a thing is impossible. The ends of the earth are so linked together that mankind has become, in a sense, one family. The solidarity of the human race is such that if one nation suffers distress or famine there are immediate world-wide repercussions. We must therefore recognise that in the present state of the world an international authority is indispensable. How else can a small country like Burma, wedged in between powerful neighbours, enjoy the freedom she is demanding?"
A prison without bars
SINCE General Ne Win’s despotic military junta assumed control in 1962, Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been isolated from the world. To travel there was initially impossible and then merely difficult — visas for no longer than two weeks were only issued to package holidaymakers — but the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) has now realised the worth of tourist dollars and relaxed those restrictions.
As such, SLORC announced 1996 to be Visit Myanmar Year, thus promoting Burma's tourist potential. A strikingly beautiful country populated by gracious and charming people, Burma offers possibilities for tourists wanting more than beaches and sunshine. The country even has a developing infrastructure, as described by Dr Naw Angelene, SLORC’s Director of Tourism in an official handout: “Roads will be wider, lights will be brighter, tours will be cleaner, grass will be greener and, with more job opportunities, people will be happier”. However, it is this very development that poses serious questions about the morality of travelling to Burma.
SLORC’s foil is Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). She is the daughter of Bogyoke Aung San — a national hero of the 1940’s independence movement. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from six-years’ house arrest last July. Since then Burma has replaced Tibet as the international cause célèbre.
Barely a day passes without media coverage of the NLD’s fight for democracy — reports which, cynics claim, will abate once Visit Myanmar Year ends in November 1997 or when SLORC ceases its hypocritical policy of self-promotion. But according to a 1996 documentary by journalist John Pilger, Aung San Suu Kyi has become a focal point for the Burmese. Her public stand has given them a rallying point. The Burmese press are willing to take the risks associated with covering her pro-democracy movement. Ne Win clamped down on the press in 1962 and according to Amnesty International any Burmese with a camera risks execution.
In a rare TV appearance Ne Win announced: “Any incorrect ideas and opinions ... are banned. If there are any more demonstrations (referring to the popular anti-government uprising in 1988) the army will shoot to kill.” Under Ne Win and a series of hand-picked successors, the junta has governed Burma with an iron fist. A 1996 Amnesty report obtained by TNT Magazine said the junta has systematically debased Burmese citizens of their human rights and is known to have practiced genocide on the ethnic minorities that comprise one-third of Burma's population.
Widespread stories of torture and false imprisonment in degrading and inhuman conditions were recently illustrated in the western press by the death in custody of former honourary consul James Leander Nichols. Nichols, 65, suffered from diabetes, hypertension and heart problems, yet he was imprisoned, reportedly without medical treatment, for two months prior to his death. A former honourary consul to Burma for Norway, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland, Nichols was charged with operating unregistered phone and fax lines, although human rights groups believe his arrest was prompted by his close links with the NLD.
Despite repeated calls from Amnesty International and European governments, the circumstances regarding Nichols' death are still uncertain — he reportedly suffered sleep deprivation during long periods of interrogation — and the European Union are currently debating economic sanctions against Burma until the circumstances are clarified. This course of action was backed by Aung San Suu Kyi in a video statement recently smuggled out of Burma. Admittedly, reprehensible abuse of human rights occurs everywhere in the world — as we concentrate on Burma, we should not forget the suppressed people of more common destinations like China, India and Indonesia — but SLORC’s régime offers a unique example of abuses occurring as a direct consequence of the tourism industry.
The Burma Action Group and other human rights groups say forced portering and slave labour is common on infrastructure works. Pilger’s recent documentary described Burma as: “a prison without bars”. Aung San Suu Kyi goes further: “Forced labour goes on all over the country and a lot of it is aimed at the tourist trade ... If you cannot provide one labourer you are fined. If you cannot afford the fine, the children are forced to labour.”
SLORC claims labour is “contributed according to noble Burmese tradition” and that much is performed by “convicted criminals”. But according to Pilger, citizens in Burma are convicted of sedition for making a joke at the generals’ expense or writing an anti-government poem. Witnesses have told Tourism Concern and other groups that “voluntary labour” is only contributed at gunpoint. A Tourism Concern spokeswoman told TNT that villages along developing roads and railways are forced to donate labour. They said they have evidence that forced labourers often work in chains and manacles while dissension leads to execution and destruction of property. Not only are people coerced into labour, but they are also forced to relocate their homes, the group said.
With its stupefying array of temples, Pagan is a prime site for tourist development, yet the old city is no longer inhabited except by hotel and government employees. The Burma Action Group and Tourism Concern said that six years ago, more than 5000 citizens were forced to move with less than two weeks' notice into poor quality housing away from the city. They said former houses and businesses were bulldozed while the new city is an unsheltered, parched place well away from the tourist routes into Pagan.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions last year reported that more than one million citizens have been similarly relocated from central Rangoon in a policy of “beautification” and estimates more than three million Burmese have been relocated in the national preparation for mass tourism.
The situation is now so bad that eight British tour companies operating in Burma co-signed a letter, dated May 7, 1996, to SLORC’s Ministry of Hotels and Tourism stating their objection to the abuses associated with tourism. Three companies, Symbiosis Expedition Planning, Himalayan Kingdoms and Nomadic Thoughts, went a stage further, ceasing operations in Burma until SLORC provides comprehensive evidence the abuses have stopped. Another company, Cycle South East Asia, is involved in further correspondence with the ministry because of harassment experienced by its tour groups. To date, none of the companies have received a reply from SLORC, nor is one realistically expected, according to Tourism Concern. Aung Sang Suu Kyi believes the pro-democracy movement will succeed against SLORC and end human rights abuses in one fell swoop whether tourists visit or not.
“We will succeed because the people will it” — so the decision to enter Burma is obviously yours. You may agree with Jennifer Cox of Lonely Planet when she states: “The more we see of Burma the more we care about individuals, the more we care about the country.”
You may feel your visit can benefit the many non-government Burmese seeking a living from tourism, but you must also consider that all contributions to Burma’s economy (no matter how small) benefit SLORC and may help empower the inept generals for that bit longer. But you should consider what Aung San Suu Kyi says: “We do not think it is a good idea to promote Visit Myanmar Year 1996 ... That is not to say stay away forever, but visit only when Burma is a democracy.”
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