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