Word: hmnh
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This week’s expedition to Burma, hosted by the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH), stands as a symbol of Harvard’s complacency and ignorance in response to the numerous and excessive human rights abuses of the Burmese military dictatorship, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC...
...HMNH has shown itself to be complicit in this situation, especially since tourism almost exclusively benefits the SPDC and impedes progress towards democracy and human rights in Burma. Most of the products sold in Burma are produced by industries tied to the SPDC, and their purchase directly finances the government’s human rights abuses, because the SPDC uses much of its hard currency to purchase arms. As a tourist in Burma, it is impossible to avoid financing the corrupt, fiscally-strapped military regime. The entry certificates paid by the 500,000 visitors to Burma each year supply...
...HMNH justifies its trip by claiming “openness” benefits the Burmese inhabitants economically and socially. But numerous reports, such as one by the U.N. in 1995 and another by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1998, have demonstrated that foreign tourism leads to increases in forced labor, which is used for construction around historical sites that host tourists. For these reasons, the democratically-elected government of Burma has expressed that it does not support tourism...
...Some [of the pieces] have sustained damage from reverberations of the staircase," said Emer McCourt, head of marketing and public relations for HMNH. "We have 200 school-kids running up and down the stairs every day. Leaves or other parts are snapping...
Joshua P. Basseches, executive director of the HMNH, said technological limitations and the organizational structure of Harvard's museums have slowed the process...