Burma Extends Activist’s Detention. Should Travelers Stay Away?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.25.07 | 1:10 PM ET
When travelers debate the ethics of visiting Burma, they invariably invoke the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been detained for years by the nation’s repressive military junta. In recent days, human rights activists and political leaders around the world have called for her release—her detention was set to expire Sunday—but, sadly, news comes today that her house arrest has been extended by yet another year. The question remains: Should travelers visit Burma or stay away?
Days ago, the Times Online (UK) published thoughtful opposing views.
Thant Myint-U argues that tourism promotes positive change, writing: “[T]ourism can help to bring in the fresh air so desperately needed. Together with the satellite dishes now mushrooming across Rangoon and Mandalay, it is this greater interaction with the outside world that will unravel the status quo. If the Government one day bans tourism again, it will be because it understands its subversive potential.”
Meanwhile, Mark Farmaner insists travelers should stay away.
“The moment the wheels of your aircraft touch the runway in Rangoon,” he writes, “you are putting money in the pockets of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships.”
Writing about Burma and San Suu Kyi for World Hum in 2005, Ethical Traveler’s Jeff Greenwald called for concerned citizens to boycott companies that trade with the regime, and to avoid doing business with travel outfitters that romanticize the country.
He also advised:
For those who seek deeper insight into the situation by visiting Burma itself, preparation is the key. Although Daw Suu Kyi discourages travel to Myanmar, some Burma activists feel that educated, individual travelers can be a powerful force for advocacy and citizen diplomacy. Certainly, my 2002 visit to Burma had a profound impact on my own perceptions about the country and its people.
Ethical Traveler’s Candles for Burma campaign is ongoing.
Photo by amsfrank via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Related on World Hum:
* Burma: ‘There Are So Many Songs Waiting To Be Sung in This Country’
* The Burma Debate, Continued
* Welcome to Naypyidaw: Burma Unveils New Capital City
* Burma’s Ongoing Cycle of Despair
* Big Brother in Burma
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Alice Johns 05.25.07 | 4:32 PM ET
Thant Myint-U is right. I’ve been to Burma and everyone I met there, while being critical of their government, were desperate to have more people come and visit. Many said that the more they were isolated, the more the government would be able to do whatever they wanted. Thant Myint-U’s book “The River of Lost Footsteps” is an excellent introduction to Burma and reads like a novel.
Carpetblogger 05.26.07 | 3:22 AM ET
This debate makes me crazy. Why is Burma different from any other country where this sort of stuff happens every single day, sometimes to an even worse degree? Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Tibet come immediately to mind.
I guess the difference is that none of those have an attractive, articulate nobel laureate and well-funded diaspora keeping their cause in front of the western elite. And also, maybe, because no one actually wants to go to some of those places, which makes it even more imperative that people go and see for themselves how bad it can be.
Refusing to travel to places like Burma or Uzbekistan or Russia is a meaningless gesture designed only to make the traveler feel better and more empowered. The absence of your pitiful $1000 or $2000 is hardly going to make an impact on a government that controls gazillions of dollars in natural resource wealth, particularly resources the west wants. Want to make a difference in some of these dictatorships? Stop using so much oil.
OK. Rant over.
E 05.26.07 | 8:44 PM ET
I think it’s a very interesting debate and I have very strong views.
One of my primary concerns is that most tourist destinations in Burma were formerly the homes of ethnic minority peoples, and many of the tourist facilities are built with forced labour.
For example, at Bagan the villagers were given less than 10 hours’ notice to vacate before their villages were razed. They were forced to porter and do construction work, during which many people are killed. After all that they were left homeless and without any of their belongings.
The Burmese government is trying to promote tourism to bring more money in. As more tourists go, more villagers will be internally displaced, forced to do hard labour and die. Tourists will not see this when they go to Burma.
I do not dispute that tourism can benefit some people. However, I think that the detriment suffered by so many of these people greatly outweighs any such benefits, and I thus strongly oppose tourism in Burma at this point.
E
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Alice Johns 05.29.07 | 2:58 PM ET
In response to the comment from “E”, it’s not true that “most tourist destinations in Burma were formerly the homes of ethnic minority peoples”. He/she gives the example of Bagan, where villagers were given 10 hours notice to leave. Bagan, the old royal capital, is in the Burman-majority heartland, about as far from ethnic minority areas as possible. Most tourist destinations - Rangoon, Mandalay, Bagan are not in minority areas. Yes, people were forcefully moved from Bagan nearly twenty years ago (in 1989) but these kinds of forced movements ended in the early 1990s. The forced movements today are confined to some areas near the Thai border where there is active fighting between the Burmese government, pro-government militia and a local insurgent group.
We shouldnt have double standards either - in Cambodia the government forcefully moves people, gives lucrative tourism-related contracts to their cronies, and rakes in millions in fees and licenses - why is there no Cambodia-boycott movement?
We need more honest assessments and not exagerated rhetoric on Burma.
ni 06.01.07 | 2:57 PM ET
I think “E” may be an exile Myanmar and who wants the foreigner to believe their propaganda and exaggregate about Myanmar. They don’t want to allow that the foreigners and tourists realize the real situation in Myanmar.
Most foreigners who have not been to Myanmar think that Myanmar have no safty, conflict civil war in everywhere and very poor situation. If they go and see to Myanmar, they will find out the real situation Myanmar ,they can deliver knowledge and create income earning opportunities to Myanmar people. Then they can evaluate the government actions for Myanmar people.
So please go and see. Find out the real things. After that you may decide and suggest the best decisions and ways to help Myanmar people.
S
Andrzej Wolski 05.08.08 | 5:10 AM ET
How about staying away from Cuba, my lefties? Or China? Or Egypt, Yemen? Venezuela? Unless someone can make a coherent argument to show a significant difference between the two regimes. Interestingly, no one on this site (or at Lonely Planet for that matter) agonizes over travel to North Korea - the absolute worst of the totalitarian lot. In fact, travel to that hellhole is seen as a feather in a backpacker’s hat.
Suu Kyi - like a lot of activists - is wrong. (Not the first time a Nobel Peace Prize winner has been wrong - she shares this honor with Arafat and Carter.) The Soviet Bloc collapsed not because of a boycott (there wasn’t any! where were the activists then?), but because of opening to western influence - media and tourists.