Word: burma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...