Burma on the Savvy Traveler

I am writing to express grave concern over this weekend's Savvy Traveler show, which attempted to highlight some experiences in Burma. The brief discussion of a tourist's experience in Burma was alarming, given that there is an international tourism ban in this military-controlled country. As a leader in the human rights community for Burma, I must express our disappointment and anger at this oversight.

My company manufactures auger filler systems that put someone's product into containers quickly and accurately. I travel to service, repair the equipment, and to train the operators and maintenance people that use our machines.

Although seemingly benign, tourists exacerbate the military atrocities in Burma by a) giving a false legitimacy to the military dictatorship that is universally condemned for its genocide, enslavement, and torture of the people, b) gives money to the illegal military regime which wholly controls all tourist venues, c) perpetuates the military propaganda that there is no human rights abuses or genocide in Burma, and most troubling, d) financially supports the tourism industry that uses slave labor and has killed thousands. The bus that the tourist describes on your show travels upon roads that are well-documented to be built by slave labor, many of them children.

The Savvy Traveler is going against the intention of international law, UN resolutions, US trade sanctions, and common decency by encouraging tourism in Burma against the wishes of the people and world human rights organizations. And you callously describe a "scene of life" inside Burma that tourists may find charming but has been tainted by the blood of so many innocent victims of the military dictators. I would expect your show be cautious when choosing Angola or Iraq or Kosovo as tourist topics to cover because of the implicit danger of encouraging tourism in these danger zones at the present time. However, in Burma, tourists are a great danger to the Burmese people because of the ignorance of where tourists' money goes and how the tourist industry was built to accommodate them.

All this information is readily available from Amnesty International, the United Nations, the US State Department, Human Rights Watch Asia, and the Free Burma Coalition (which works with the democratic government in exile). Most travel agencies and airlines do not fly into Burma due to the human rights crisis, and nearly 200 corporation have ended business in Burma. I understand if this information is new to you, but please take heed. Your show's casual illustration of tourism in Burma could be construed as collaboration with the military's propaganda machine that encourages unwitting tourists to bring dollars to Rangoon so the military can show up the international community.

-Mick Schommer
Free Burma Coalition

P.S. This was particularly disturbing timing, as the show aired the same day that Michael Aris died. Michael Aris is the husband of Nobel Laureate and our democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi has been in detention by the military since 1989 and separated from her husband and family.

 

 

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