Voices for Burma's Representatives

“Those who would learn more, those who are sensitive to the suffering, they should definitely come……If they spend their money wisely, the junta need not see any of it; it can go directly to the people.”

James Mawdsley, British political activist imprisoned for public protest in Burma, “The Times” 16 February 2002

“Never has an international problem been seen in such black and white terms. International problems are by their nature complex. During 3 weeks travelling around Burma, I met less than 30 travellers/tourists and of the ones I met they tended to be well-informed and wanted to help the people. Of the locals I met and that wished to discuss politics, none supported the tourist boycott. A free society cannot be born out of isolation.”

Andrew Gray, Co-founder and Co-Director of Voices For Burma, March 2005

“Experiencing Burmese custom and culture firsthand, building relationships and friendships with local people – these are ways to bring the Burma struggle to a personal level.  Experiences, not theory, inspire people to take action.”  

Cherie McCosker, Co-Director of Voices for Burma, May 2005

"Cultural exchange is the bedrock of international peace and understanding."

Emily Pelter, Voices for Burma committee member, November 2006

Burmese human rights groups and individuals

"It is up to tourists to inform themselves properly. I personally have no objection.  When I say tourists, I mean the real tourists you know, who are really interested in the social, economic and cultural conditions.I think these people can always come to us, no problem."

NLD member, whom spoke to Al Jazeera English Channel in October 2006.  He remained anonymous for fear of government reprisals.

"We want the truth to come out. We want people to know the reality about Burma and the suffering of the people.”

Par Par Lay, imprisoned satirist, one of the Moustache Troupe Brothers - “International Herald Tribune” 7 February 2002 ­ Comments to James Pringle

“We want tourists to come and spread the word. Take our photograph and put it on the Internet. Foreigners are our protection.”

U Lu Maw, another of the Moustache Troupe – quoted in a report on tourism to Burma by the Vienna-based Institute of Integrative Tourism and Development March 2003

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'We need many ears, many eyes. The regime is rich - if tourists don't come it makes no difference to them. But it does to us.'

U Lu Maw, the most voluble of Mandalay's Moustache Brothers 

"An open society can not be built in and through isolation"

Motto of the the Free Burma Coalition

'Tourists who come to our historically and culturally interesting, but highly isolated land-locked towns and cities, serve as mobile, human bridges that span our starkly different worlds.

The ordinary Burmese people need friends who are capable of making their own intellectual and ethical decisions, not the ones who would be push-over when confronted with the self-assigned moral police of overzealous foreign world-savers. Our struggle is waged in the name of these ordinary folk. Aside from the fact that both elite and ordinary folk want a free and Prosperous Burma, no one or no group has either moral or intellectual monopoly over how to accomplish that mission.  But one thing is certain - it is not possible to build - or even sow the seed of - an open society by further isolating the members of the targetted society.

To be sure, tourism is not going to produce reforms in Burma, something 2-3 generations of civilian and military personnel have failed to accomplish.  We can't expect outsiders to come and do the job we ourselves - our parents' generation, our generation andthe current new generation - are supposed to do.

Tourists are not morally obligated to liberate the Burmese.  They are there for their own purposes. If something positive happens, it happens by default. Not many sane people in the world are deluded enough to think they can save the world or they can liberate an entire society out of oppression by repeatedly stating the values of freedom, democracy and human rights.

There may be concerns related to tourism on grounds of public health (spread of transmittable diseases, for instance), conceivable damage to fragile eco-systems and perhaps of sex tourism.

But to picket every tourist and guilt-trip them because they go to politically contested Burma is not only ignorant but misguided and self-defeating, let alone address the potential hazards resultant of the rise in tourism.’

Dr Zar Ni, Leader of the American-based Free Burma Coalition and former tourist guide in Mandalay

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‘In Burma tourism doesn't help most ordinary people, instead it finances the regime that keeps them poor and oppressed. Every tourist that visits Burma puts money into the hands of the regime. That is why Burma's democracy movement has asked tourists to stay away. Please respect their wishes, don't go.’

Yvette Mahon, Director of Burma Campaign UK reported in the BBC news website 1^st February 2005

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"The amount of money it [the Burmese junta] is getting from tourism is negligible. At most it gets in the low 10s of millions of dollars. So even if tourists grew ten times, so they started getting 4-500 million a year, it wouldn’t make a difference between the regimes survival and not. Yet if the number of tourists increased ten times I think it would make all the difference in the world of exposing the country. Imagine if during the protests of last month instead of a few tourists, Rangoon was full of tourists? The landscape we have constructed of few tourists, almost no western companies, almost no foreign investment except in extracting industries oil and gas, is almost an ideal landscape where a repressive political system can continue to exist indefinitely. "

Thant Myint-U, former UN official and author of recent history of Burma, The River of Lost Footsteps.  Quoted in "Answers in the Past", an interview with Lakshmi Indrasimhan for the Tehelka Foundation.

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"Isolation is the regime's default condition. It is what fuels the present system. Burma might not become a democracy overnight, but it will certainly improve with more outside interaction. Would Indonesia be better off if no one had visited during its 30 years of military rule?"
Thant Myint-U, author of "River of Lost Foot Steps", on the tourism boycott campaign of Burma/Myanmar

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"So what of the future?  There are no easy options, no quick fixes, no grand strategies that will create democracy in Burma overnight or even over several years.  If Burma were less isolated, if there were more trade, more engagement  - more tourism in particular - and if this were coupled with a desire by the government for greater economic reform, a rebuilding of state institutions, and a slow opening up of space for civil society, then perhaps the conditions for political change would emerge over the next decade or two.  Though not a particularly encouraging scenario, it is a realistic one, however much it might lack the punch of more revolutionary approaches."
Thant Myint-U, author of "The River of Lost Foot Steps"

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"Burma is no South Africa.  There can be found none of the Burmese equivalent of de Clerk, Nelson Mandela, the integrated White-controlled national economy, the enlightened elements within the dominant racist white community, the political savvy African National Congress, the pan-African Solidarity.

There simply isn't any substantial cost of staying in power for the generals. None whatsoever - except in terms of the long-term opportunity cost for the future generations of Burmese peoples."

Dr Zarni, founder Free Burma Coalition

Burmese citizens

"I would advise those who believe such rubbish [about foreign reports relating to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s closest allies being tortured to death during political imprisonment] to talk to people who have actually been here as tourists or to come see for yourself.  If they feel that eating at local restaurants, or buying bananas in the market or staying at small inns and taking taxis would increase the general’s wealth, they can bring tents, sandwiches and bicycles”

Ma Thanegi, in a letter to New Statesman,

27 January 2005.  Ma Thanegi was personal aide to DASSK in 1988-89 and imprisoned from 1989 to 1992

'We need many ears, many eyes. The regime is rich - if tourists don't come it makes no difference to them. But it does to us.

Lu Maw, the most voluble of Mandalay's Moustache Brothers

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"Sanctions and long-distance condemnation do little to address the multifaceted challenges facing the country today. They were a response to the very different Burma of nearly 20 years ago, when it looked like democracy was just around the corner and a good push from friends overseas might make all the difference. Without a fresh international approach, it may soon be too late to avoid a catastrophe in Burma."                                                                                                                                    

Thant Myint-U

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"People are starving; prices are rising. Under this military government there are so many human rights abuses.... If there are no human rights, there is no value of a human."

~ U Kovinda, In "A Monk's Tale of Protest and Escape From Myanmar", NYT, 26 Oct 2007

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"We would like to have democracy, but the most important thing for us is to have peace, and enough food on our plates."

Burmese woman talking to BBC journalist Kate McGeown

Politicians

‘I would urge anyone who may be thinking of visiting Burma on holiday to consider carefully whether by their actions they are helping to support the regime and prolong such dreadful abuses.’

Tony Blair quoted on Burma Campaign UK’s website

‘Some people are asking tourists not to go to Burma at present. They’re not extremists but a democratically elected party that won a general election for a parliament that has never been allowed to convene. These people – the National League for Democracy, led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi- specifically ask visitors to stay away until the brutal military junta which rules the country allows them to take up their rightful place in government.’

‘Aung San Suu Kyi asks a simple thing. She hasn’t asked for us to be courageous, she hasn’t asked for military help. She’s asked for sanctions so that the junta will be starved out of existence. We can impose our own sanctions and not go on holiday to Burma. And we should certainly not buy from publishers that suggest we should.’

Gynss Kinnock MEP taken from Burma Campaign UK website which publishes an edited extract from The Guardian 25 June 2000

Backpackers/Tourists who have visited Burma

 “That is also why more people should visit Burma. The locals are very happy with you and eager to make contact. Of course, responsible tourism is important, but most important is contact. Personally I don’t believe in a boycott. Even if it would work in theory in practise it is simply impossible. Getting nobody, no tourist, no business man, no government, to have contact with Burma is unlikely to happen.

Rather it is much easier to make contact/ and the contact will give local Burmese people a different view on the world. It will be a reminder they are not left alone. It will help them believe change is possible. They will believe in an alternative and only when they see an alternative, change will come.”

German Backpacker, 2004

I believe in tourists going to Burma if the people of Burma can benefit - its so important to help them and anyone who can come back and help raise awareness or make a difference then its worth it. But I was disgusted by the some of the tourists that I saw there - Burma is not just a cool country to visit on your year off travelling- it is not Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia - stay there if you want that feeling... Trust me - I back tourists going to Burma after all in a way I was one - but for the right reasons and at least show some understanding and respect in whats going on around you...

Extract from an email to VFB received from a recent British visitor to Burma

"The boycott is totally pointless," said Ton Schoonderwoerd, an independent Dutch tourist watching the sun rise above Pagan's temples, the product of 230 years of building by Buddhist kings that came to an abrupt end with a Mongol invasion in 1287. "It may seem good to politicians in the US and Europe, but out here it just means that people struggle even more to make ends meet," he said.

Crackdown Fallout Hits Burma Tourism Hard, Ed Cropley, The Irrawaddy, 14 March 2008

Travel agents

'I have a personal and emotional link with Burma which neither Tony Blair nor any of the celebrities are likely to have. I too want liberty for the people of Burma and my family, many of whom still live there, but I don't believe this is the only recourse we have.

If international political pressure and boycotting tourism has not worked for 16 years, should we now not be seeking a more proactive approach?'

Amrit Singh of Asian tour operator TransIndus, reported in The Guardian, February 2005-02-28.  Amrit was born in Burma.

‘As of 1996, well over 90% of all tourist-oriented businesses in the country belonged to the private sector, so avoiding government-owned or government-operated concessions is fairly easy. Whatever you decide, there isn't a single indication that government repression, which has thrived on 34 years of political isolation and virtual non-visitation, will somehow slacken due to a relative lack of foreign visitors. And if the private sector were somehow to suffer as a result of a boycott, SLORC will simply blame the opposition and continue raking in hard currency through their total monopoly on gems, minerals, timber and energy resources -- now and always the regime's main sources of revenue.’
 

‘Tourism remains one of the only industries to which the ordinary people have access. Any reduction in tourism automatically means a reduction in local income-earning opportunities. For this reason alone, I continue to believe that the positives of travel to Burma outweigh the negatives.’

Joe Cummings, author of Lonely Planet’s Burma guidebook as reported in the Third World Traveller

“I haven’t met a single person inside Burma who supported a tourism boycott, including many people I have met in the pro-democracy movement”

Joe Cummings, travel writer in “Third World Traveller” February 2001

Journalists

“In ten days travelling across Burma, people bent my ears in bars and cars, on riverbanks and in villages. They talked so much I feared for their safety. They were funny, bitter, rueful, and touchingly friendly. Totalitarian countries are lonely places. ‘Thank you for coming’ they said, ‘ talking to oneself sends a person mad’.”

Christopher Hope, “Daily Telegraph”, 7 April, 2001

‘The British prime minister's proposal for a tourism boycott of Burma,raised before Britons and the leaders of the international community,is an idea which, if implemented, would do more harm than good to the people of Burma.’

‘Tourists to Burma should not be seen as shoring up the regime by bringing in huge amounts of international currency.’
 

‘Rather, they are natural witnesses to events in that country, the eyes and ears through which the world is able to monitor the kinds of abuse that Tony Blair wants to sanction. Tourists are also the eyes and earsthrough which those locked inside Burma learn of the world beyond their borders.’

'Tony Blair's proposal, then, would remove one of the few links remaining between the democratic world and the people of Burma, further damping what hopes for freedom may yet burn, and finally abetting the Tibetisation of Burma.'

Mettanando Bhikkhu is a scholar monk educated in the West.

'Tourist boycott benefits no one but China'.

Mettanando Bhikkhu, Bangkok Post, February 16, 2005

"The primary worry for most families is how, each day, the family will be fed."

~ Karin Eberhardt: Humanitarian aid not enough for Myanmar's poor, Bangor Daily News, November 15, 2007

In response to a call for boycott:

"Street satirists and ordinary Burmese agree: a travel boycott will ruin them." 

Read more in Chris McGreal of the Guardian's article.

Aung San Suu Kyi

 The people of Burma have suffered a lot. As you know, they have been forced to take part in the building of roads and bridges. People have been moved away from homes, entire villages have been destroyed in order to clear up the places for tourists. So we would like potential visitors to Burma to show that they are not going to buy their pleasure at the expense of the ordinary people………But how would I advise tourists who come to Burma? I would say, ‘Please ask yourself - why do you want to come to this country. Do you think that by coming you are going to do the country any good? Or is it simply to satisfy some vanity or curiosity in yourself?’”

“Letters from Burma” Penguin 1997:page 44.  An alternative version may be found in the On-Line Burma Library: “To encourage tourist industry, for further development and smooth running”

 ‘Please use your liberty to promote ours’

 “Burma will be here for many years, so tell your friends to visit us later. Visiting now is tantamount to condoning the regime.”

Authors

'Because of the travel restrictions, tourists can only stay in Burma for weeks and never see any evidence of the regime's more brutal tactics.  I have spoken to some tourists who wonder what all the human-rights activists campaigning outside Burma are fussing about.  ('Everyone smiles at you - it can't be that bad,' one tourist said with a shrug.)  Indeed, everything in Burma does seem normal, people go about their business in the streets, talking, laughing, chewing betel, reading, going to the movies.  As one Burmese friend had chided me, 'What did you expect?  That we would all be sitting around on the pavement crying?'  He gave me an analogy for this disturbing phenomenon of invisible oppression.  Burma is like a woman with cancer, he explained.  She knows she is sick, but she carries on with her life as if nothing is wrong.  She refuses to go to a doctor for treatment.  Instead, she swirls thanaka (a Burmese cosmetic or sunblock made from tree bark) on her cheeks, puts fresh flowers in her hair, and goes to the bazaar as if everything is normal.  She talks to people, they talk to her.  They know she has cancer and she knows she has cancer, but nobody says anything.'

Emma Larkin, 'Secret histories, Finding George Orwell in a Burmese teashop', 2004

General

“She is extremely popular, she is the best hope for this country and she’s wrong about sanctions”

Japan Times 3 May 2004 - close supporter of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to Philip Cunningham of Chulalongorn University, Bangkok

“The Dalai Lama has announced publicly that it is beneficial for foreigners to witness the oppression in Tibet and to inform others of their experiences on coming home. Tourism is also thought to be a source of encouragement to Tibetans to have any form of contact with the West………Tourism in some respects at least provides a window to the outside world and a first step towards a more open policy”

See www.freetibet.org/info/action/action5.html

“I understand that Aung San Suu Kyi may not like it, but tourism may be a profound factor in laying the ground for democracy.”

Francesco Frangialli, Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organisation, Hong Kong 15 July 2003

‘I think we have a particular evil to deal with that needs a different and stronger response," he said of the country's military regime.’

Bono, lead singer of U2, as reported in BBC news website 21^st May 2004

''On the economic side, Burma is one of the poorest places in the world. It needs investment, it needs tourism, it needs connection with the world economy, it needs to be part of Asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations]-not just in a formal way, but in an effective way-and I think we should be encouraging as many people to go visit Burma, to go see the country to come to understand it and to be tourists to establish scientific or cultural contacts as well. And I see sanctions as undermining all of that process. And since I know that even if there were no sanctions development would be hard enough in Burma. I don't want to add great difficulties to that task and deliberately impoverish the country."
Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Columbia University Earth Institute,in 'Sachs on Sanctions: An Interview with Jeffrey Sachs', The Irrawaddy, October 2004

"Tourism is like fire. Out of control, it can burn your house down.  If you harness it, it can heat your home and cook your food" 

Costas Christ, expanding an Asian proverb at a conference on Sustainable Tourism.

"Nevertheless, in labour intensive sectors such as tourism and textiles, a fall in demand [caused by boycotts and sanctions] could also have adverse consequences on employment, even if the overall macroeconomic impact is small."

 International Monetary Fund, discussing sanctions in an annual review of Burma's economy.

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"After a decade of experience, it's clear: economic sanctions on Myanmar may feel right, but they have helped produce the wrong results. Encouraging Western investment, trade and tourism may feel wrong, but maybe - just maybe - could produce better results."

Stanley A Weiss is a Founding Chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartison organisation based in Washington.