Let's Not Go Myanmar

The scene is irresistible: smiling children in colorful clothes running and playing while behind them, green rice paddies stretch to distant mountains illuminated by a splash of sunshine off the gilded dome of a Buddhist temple. It is hard to imagine how this scene could be the latest weapon of a despotic military regime which continues to rule the Southeast Asian nation of Burma. But the scene is as dangerous as it is irresistible.

It is dangerous because the military regime which rules Burma has discovered a new source of money: selling the beauty of the Burmese people and their land to foreign tourists. So far, the editors of the Harvard travel series Let's Go! have been unseduced and have refused to feature a Let's Go! guide to Burma. Next year, however, they plan to write one. A Let's Go Myanmar! guidebook would play directly into the hands of Burma's despots. The guide would help the regime exploit Burma's charm for its own ends.

This scene and others like it are the product of a new offensive by Burma's military government, which began with a "Visit Myanmar Year" in late 1996. The military junta of Burma--now officially known as Myanmar--hit upon a way to exploit further the country it has controlled since 1962: Western tourism. This government rules despite a popular election in 1990 in which the National League for Democracy, headed by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sun Suu Kyi, won 82 percent of the seats in the national assembly.

What the current government needs to stay in illegitimate power is money--money that is increasingly coming from tourism. Marketing Burma as the hot new destination for foreign travel, the military government hopes visitors will not recall less attractive scenes like that of student demonstrators being mowed down by government soldiers--a relatively unpublicized massacre on a greater scale than the Tiananmen Square protests a year later, but without the latter's visibility. To this end, the junta has enlisted high-powered American public relations and publicity firms.

But the real coup for Burma's military rulers would be to garner independent interest in travel to Burma. Burma's military government would like nothing better than for a Let's Go Myanmar! guidebook to help them dress their country up for excited tourists.

In dire need of foreign currency, the junta has sold off Burma's timber, oil and gas to multinational corporations, has turned a blind eye to the flourishing opium trade and has gone begging to multinational banks and international donors. The foreign reserves it gains allow the regime to buy weapons and maintain a brutal control exercised in the 1998 massacres of demonstrators and students. The military establishment has maintained its power over much of the country despite rebellion by oppressed ethnic minorities and the democratic election which the military lost.

To make Burma attractive, the military is using its traditional mainstays of coercion and intimidation. According to independent investigations by the New York Times and the State Department, forced labor is routinely used in constructing the infrastructure of tourism: roads, hotels and airports. Even tourist sites such as the recently restored Gold Palace in Mandalay are not immune.

The palace was rebuilt in 1995 by conscripted laborers monitored by armed soldiers. Every one of the city's 500,000 citizens was conscripted for three days every month, unless he or she paid a fee. Resistors are subject to rape, torture, imprisonment, execution and a host of other abuses which typify the regime's treatment of dissenters.

The Let's Go! editors have a responsibility to those who travel or live in the foreign lands they feature. It is a responsibility that goes beyond scruples or honesty and incorporates an optimism about the possibilities for intercultural exchange that uplifts everyone involved. In Burma, at least, this responsibility means delaying a visit until you can be invited and welcomed by the Burmese. It means respecting the wishes of the people and joining with their elected officials in opposing military schemes to sell the country as an unspoiled Shangri-La, ripe for the next wave of eager Western backpackers.

Aung Sun Suu Kyi has explicitly asked tourists not to visit a military-controlled Burma. Do the editors of Let's Go feel they have a deeper grasp on the social and political situation in the Burma than its elected, imprisoned leader?

The editors of Let's Go! have acted responsibly in the past by refusing to include Burma in the Let's Go! series, and explaining why it is not included. A break from this tradition--a decision to offer a Let's Go Myanmar! in the upcoming year--would play into the hands of a dictatorship trying to market itself into survival despite the wishes of the people.

Surely, tourists who travel abroad want to respect and value the people in the lands they visit. Thus the endless debates over "Asian values," democracy and the value of constructive engagement should ring hollow when compared with the simple, sincerely expressed wishes of the Burmese: they do not want tourists as long as tourism undermines their democratic aspirations. And with the current level of military control over the burgeoning tourist trade, visitors to Burma cannot but hurt the people and land they are visiting. In any case, I cannot imagine that staying in hotels built with slave labor makes for a pleasant holiday.

The Burmese I know are warm and friendly, and I am certain their country is fascinating and beautiful. And when I can be welcomed to Burma by these people, and not the military government, I will be the first to go. At that point, I may be able to grab a Let's Go Burma! to pack in my suitcase. But as long as my travel there would buttress a cruel regime that does not enjoy popular support, I hope never to see a Let's Go guidebook to the country. As long as Burma remains unfree, let's not go Myanmar.

David S. Grewal '98 is an economics concentrator in Kirkland House. He is chair of the Harvard Burma Action Group.