The Irrawaddy’s William Boot has recently penned an article on the Western tourism boycott of Burma and the junta’s continuing battle to attract foreign travellers. It prompted me to ask some questions.Â
The tourism boycott is one of those simmering, emotive, activist causes that appear simple to comprehend but - no matter what position an individual deigns to take – a lot of questions remain unanswered. After years of encouraging Westerners to “take the pledge” and boycott tourism to Burma (as even Tony Blair has done) we still know very little about the impact of these efforts.Â
In a small attempt to clarify the boycott’s impact, searching for “Burma Travel” (an innocuous and common enough search query) in a popular search engine brings up a pro-boycott website as the 30th link – way down on the third page. This is respectable but, after maintaining a big Internet pro-boycott presence for years, it still isn’t exactly high exposure! Potential tourists will wade through a sea of tourism sites before the boycott advocates get a chance to get their message out. Of course, the real questions aren’t about search engine optimisation and Internet visibility. The real questions are about the impact of the tourism boycott on the situation inside Burma.Â
Some very informative material, produced by the Burma Campaign UK, attempts to answer some of the most pressing questions about the tourism boycott. But their literature, as compelling as it is, only prompts me to ask more questions and probe further into the murky depths of Burma’s tourist economy. I thought that The Burma Campaign’s thoroughly researched “Dirty list” might be a good place to start. It highlights travel companies, and other enterprises, that do business in Burma.  As an example of their style, they describe one ”dirty” travel company in the following terms:
Insight Guides is an independent publishing company that produce holiday guides, including a guide to Burma that promotes tourism to the country. Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to visit Burma because it helps fund the regime and gives it legitimacy. Forced and child labour was used to develop many tourist facilities.
This type of description - while it no doubt appeals to activists and their natural allies - probably doesn’t convince too many other people.
To probe issues that I feel are not adequately explored, I have some questions that I think are worth asking about the tourism boycott. If you have questions of your own, feel free to jump in and post them as comments. If, on New Mandala, we can assemble a selection of probing questions, then I would be keen to write to boycott advocates and ask for their responses. It would be great to hear what they have to say. For everybody’s benefit, it would also be great to get more discussion going on this important, lightening rod issue. Â
Some initial questions immediately spring to mind:
- Can we quantify the impact that the boycott has had on the Burmese tourist industry or the Burmese junta? How many people who are actually serious about a trip to Burma have been detered by the tourism boycott? I think the number, to be fair, is probably pretty high. Over the years many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of potential travelers have probably avoided the country, even if they have never formally signed a “pledge” to do so. But that’s only my hunch. Is there a good way of quantifying this? Some interesting hypothesis testing could be done. It’s in everybody’s interest (whether Burmese or engaged outsider) to have better information about the impact of the boycott.
- How well do we actually understand the structure of Burma’s tourist industry? Who are the owners and what do the profits eventually fund? Where do “average” tourists spend their money? How much really money goes to the government?  These are tough questions and opinions tend to dominate in this sphere. Are we in the potentially problematic situation where it is the Lonely Planet guide titled Myanmar (Burma) (9th edition – page 25), with its guesstimates on this issue, is the best study of individual tourist spending on the Burmese economy?
- Who does the tourism boycott actually hurt? To rephrase this question – did Thandar Shwe’s wedding attire miss an extra diamond accessory because of the Burma tourism boycott?Â
- How does the Western tourist boycott (and the efforts that have gone in to encouraging it) shape up compared to the other commercial activities in Burma that go on unhindered by boycotts? Is a boycott that can’t bring Thai, Chinese or Indian consumers (or celebrities) on board a waste of effort? Western-focussed campaigns only target a small fraction of the people who are potential travelers to Burma. I can see that back in the mid-1990s, back when Burma boycotts really started to take off, that regional economic dynamics were different. But now, with more border crossings from neighbouring countries and with wealthier tourists from across Asia travelling to Burma, should the focus of boycotts shift to discouraging these Asian travelers? Is this feasible? Who could craft such a pan-regional message and fund it so that the impact of any boycott in Burma would be profound?
- And so what about encouraging boycotts within Asia? What about a Thai-language anti-tourism campaign? Would anybody have the courage, or conviction, to, say, run a sustained Thai language campaign in Mae Sai against crossing the river to Burma? Would it be worth it, just to deter the Thai middle class from shopping for bootleg DVDs and knockoff handbags on the Burmese side? If high principles are at stake, and I think that many people feel that there are, then a campaign from the Thai side of the border seems like a logical way forward. Has this been tried? I hope so. Why haven’t I ever seen tourism boycott material in Thai in Mae Sai? Â
Answering some of these questions, and putting the answers in the context of today’s regional economic and political interactions, would be a tough task. However, it would be great if somebody took on this challenge.  Any report on the boycott that actually got some answers to some of these issues would be well worth reading. Properly researched and written with flair, it could probably also generate a great deal of interest around the world.Â
That Aung San Suu Kyi has repeatedly asked tourists to boycott the country will still be good enough for many. It will encourage them to stay away, and make them feel like they are making a contribution through “avoided tourism”. But is this much the same as the “avoided deforestation” schemes that I questioned earlier in the week? Is it just as hard to quantify and police? Is it just as hard to identify the winners and the losers? Is it just as easy to get swept up in partisan judgments?Â
This is an issue that is crying out for some rigorous, non-partisan research. I am sure that many potential tourists may actually want to see some evidence that, after long years of effort, the tourism boycott is actually having an impact.  Some people will want to know that avoiding travel to Burma actually matters beyond just making them feel warm and fuzzy. Some people will want to know that the there is an impact, and that the boycott is worthwhile.
People will also want to know that the alternatives – one of which is opening the country to large-scale tourism – are worse options. To convince the skeptics, lots of questions still need to be answered.
18 responses so far ↓
1 aiontay // Nov 11, 2006 at 12:15 am
Are there different types of toursts and what are the relative impacts of each variety? It seems to me that there is a qualitative difference between a Thai from Bangkok going a shopping day trip to Mae Sai and a German package tourist flying into Rangoon, exchanging money at an official money exchange, staying at a hotel owned by somebody with direct ties to the regime, and being sheparded around by tour guides for a few weeks.
Also, it seems to me that at some point ASSK, or at least the NLD, have expressed a few caveats. If I remember correctly, they never said there should be a total ban on travel to Burma by foreigners. Maybe somebody can dig those statements up. Of course, my memory may not be correct.
2 Tim // Nov 11, 2006 at 11:14 am
Nic, I say don’t try and convince the skeptics and ask different questions…these very same questions were being bandied around in tour companies and on the backpacker streets and tourist hotels in the late eighties to early and mid nineties regarding Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Cambodia, who were either under US Embargo or invaded by Vietnam also when visits were only allowed for 7 days to Burma, Laos and Cambodia.
These questions are the questions given to a voting public by their politicians (here Aungsan and their activists) and so have set very limited frameworks for conceptualising what is happening and so you end up exploring the options they want you to, that inevitably sees you taking their side and being morally upstanding, or you refute their position and occupy a seeming radical yet rational position of difference and meanwhile in Burma things remain the same. In effect the political myopia that is enforced through this makes it virtually impossible for people to think about the situation in any other terms and we get the agreed apon culture of how Burma must be talked about. Its is tantamount to subjecting the population to an imperialist discourse that has the effects of determining the level and the morality of their poverty.
Why reduce the situation in Burma and people’s”place in it” down to a US born notion of embargo (or do what I say or else) attitude and politicise a practice in support for a politician whose own actions as a deposed political leader is having no effect on the “dictatorship” in power but is certainly prolonging the impasse that allows them to maintain power (the west having bought into the “free Aungsan first” mechanism that so long as the leaders have that to play with they needn’t do anything else in terms of real reform. If the votig public can’t get behind the political organisations of opposition to the Junta in their home countries why then burden them with a defacto responsibility that they have themselves rejected before they set out? It is very much a prozletysing mission of compliance to the will of the very few politically outraged and when it is allowed to be reduced to this/these terms the effort is totally ineffectual…you will not get consensus on tourism and even if you did it isn’t what it is all about…sorry for those of you who might think it is and thus be able to make through appropriation other’s experience your own, and thus constitute yourselves as more meaningful when the holiday ends and you tell your mates at the pup how you boycotted Burma.
Anyway, how does “knowing” qualitatively and or quantitativly what tourism in Burma “does” make a difference to the issues…would you be looking of a burden of proof that actions are morally sound now becasue we have data? It is not possible to know even if research into it was permitted and there certainly isn’t a tipping point that with research guidance can be reached say the govt gets x percent of tourists money but the people get Y percent Y=x2 so there we can now visit Burma.
What about thinking about just how moral the whole situation in Burma has gotten and how you are all buying into it wholesale with no real involvement, history or understanding of it and the on the ground details. It is Journalism and Tourism that are running these debates and they are guided by politicians…where is the healthy cynicism? Why are the debates remaining the same 15 years later… how many of you have actually questioned your own take on what’s happening?
The hyper valorised images of slave gangs and all the other rhetoric that fuels the fires of outrage in your bellies and keeps you fascinated (orientalist fascination) have their parallels in the neighbouring countries of Thailand Laos and Bangladesh…the massmurders by the Thai military of HIV positive women on the border of Thailand and Burma doesn’t seem to be cause to boycott Tom Yum Goong and other Thai products, especially not the ecstasy filled amphetamine fuelld full moon parties of the countries south…and so on…
Why is Aungsan daughter of a dictator seen as so immaculately clean when her social revisionist policies are more extreme than the recent Thaksin govt and onbviously aimed at social control…anyone…?
What I am saying here is that you are all so caught up in your own self importance, and righteous debating of “what to do about Burma” that you can’t see just how well the situation has been played to your middleclass neoimperialist heart strings and how blind to the realities of the situation you are…your fantastical moments of excitement when a journalist produces a piece of film that REVEALS new capitals and what not is like a soap opera addiction and illustrates just how much of wht is happening here is about consumption/appropriation of other’s lives.
The up shot of it all is that when it comes to tourism the discourse is not about whether it is morally right to travel based on where “your money” will get… into the hands of the Junta or the people, but a cheap political ploy to galvanise the world’s consuming middleclasses to a political cause that they otherwise don’t care about and that’s alternatives are not so different to what is happening now.
If you want to reduce the issue to economics then it will go nowhere…If you think Aungsan Suchi is a liberal minded, democratic thinking panacea for Burma’s problems then you are naive.
3 Tara // Nov 11, 2006 at 1:14 pm
That’s basically the same question I have, aiontay. The pro-boycott discourse doesn’t seem to make any distinction in types of tourist or tourism. I would even take the question a step further though, what’s the difference between the rich German tourist on a package tour, and the backpacker whose only marginally informed, and beleives they are avoiding businesses with ties to the government? Pro-Burma travel sources talk about staying in local guesthouses, not using package tours, but where is their money actually ending up?
It seems many of these backpackers come back with stories about how wonderful the people are, how easy it is to keep your money local – but what do they know about the demographics of the region they visit? Re-settling ethnic Burmans in other areas, and removing local villagers to build infrastructure to support tourism is not unheard of. And to what extent are local ethnic minorities marginalized when their economy shifts to embrace tourism – are they the ones who start selling handicrafts in the former food markets – or is it outsiders? Even if they are involved in the shift, to what extent are their lives impacted by it?
Balancing the impacts of tourism on local economies and cultures seems like tricky business anywhere, much less a place like Burma. It definitely would be refreshing to see some real investigation into these questions.
I do also recall a quote from ASSK which talks about positive tourism – the first comment on this post at Bear Bites has a third-hand reference to such a stance. It’s possible I’ve never seen direct quotes from ASSK about the issue though, and am conflating different second and third-hand comments.
Voices for Burma has several quotes on the issue from ASSK and other politicians.
4 Tim // Nov 11, 2006 at 1:55 pm
There is more to it than that Tara, the moral claims of the backpacker, in fact the whole discourse of difference between back packer and “german Tourist” is irrlevant, but not on the grounds of who is informed or not but that the idea of the money “getting to the government” is more a notion of contagion and pollution and purity taboos than any discourse about the goings on in Burma…and discussion is kept ignorant by a failure of anyone to actually question the beginings of the whole discourse which unfortunately boils down to how the west is always so hysterically disturbed by the non-west’s recalcitrance regarding “Western Liberal Democracy”. Have a look at this stites reams of posts on the issue in Thailand…anything outside of a blanket acceptance of Demorcacy in the image of America is irrelevant not worthy of comment or analysis…see the debate on Thaksin and astrology and voodoo here…local beliefs and practices are irrelevant because the ral business of democracy is being interfered with…laughable..
So bizarre is this paternalistic discourse around the issue of tourism in Burma that tourism is no longer under question in its own right…obviously it mustn’t be “neo-colonial”, disruptive, environmentally unsound or any other of the one pertinent issues that once surrounded it as a practice…nope, in the interest of western paternalism we can brush such considerations asde otherwise what would we have to contribute to the debate and how would we get to “go and see it all for real” to entertain our morbid fascination with other’s suffering…
5 aiontay // Nov 13, 2006 at 6:37 am
Tim,
It has been a few years since I have travelled in Burma, so please bring me up to speed by filling me in with the on the ground details of Burma so my middle class understanding can be improved.
Hiwever, I would request that you keep the colonialist, neo-colonialst, and paternalist cant to a minium. Aiontay is my Kiowa name, and if I need someone to tell me about paternalism or colonialism, I’ve got plenty of family and friends (some decidely not middle class) to tell me all about it without the moralizing, academic jargon. On second thought, go ahead. Watching someone so obiviously wrapped up in western paternalistic discourse denouncing western paternalism is always good for a laugh.
6 Tim // Nov 13, 2006 at 10:46 am
Aiontay request denied. Your membership to an indigenous group of north America gives you no more authority to mute others than my membership to an indigenous group of northern Europe gives me.
Your attempt to claim authority based on your ethnic and class disposition speaks for itself regarding your grasp of paternalism, no need to become repetitious about it, and the recourse to the authority of having friends and family who are “decidedly middle-class” reflects further the kind of contempt one can expect from a class traitor.
Are you trying to say that there is no point to what I wrote here? If so explain why rather than claim to be able to speak for the spirits of paternalism (which you do so well)..or are you going to reinforce my point with your obvious pig ignorance of anything outside of your narcissistic conceit of being a “native”.
A recommended read regardless
“How Natives Think? about captain cook for example.” Sahlins
7 Tara // Nov 13, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Uh-oh, Aiontay, looks like you’ve really set him off now. The best thing to do when accused of being a ‘narcissistic, pig ignorant, class traitor’ is just to back away slowly and don’t make any sudden moves – and whatever you do, don’t make direct eye contact.
8 aiontay // Nov 13, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Don’t worry Tara. The fact that Tim can only respond by citing Western academic writing in a response full of academic jargon show that no matter how much he’s tied up in all that schtick.
Like I said, it is always good for a laugh.
9 Tim // Nov 14, 2006 at 9:56 am
Aiontay, I do apologise for putting you in a position where you were unable to contribute anything intelligent to this thread, effectivelly leaving you to reduce discussion about Burma to being about you, perhaps a default position of yours when someone has different views to your own? It certainly highlights the point I mde about middle-class appropriation of other’s experince. The relevance of your family and self and their mixed class composition and ethnicity to the discussion is lost on me and particulalry uninteresting to be honest. This would be the case even if you were from Kachin or the Shan States, were Red Wa or a Tibeto-Burman speaking indigene of the hills of northern Burma and made the same ludicrous claims. Basically ethnicity and in particular your is not what we are talking about.
Now While I am sure you believe that you have experienced paternalism (western paternalism) in ways or quantities that no one else could understand you weren’t being told about it here (again it wasn’t about you) I was describing a process as being paternalistic, which even if you have in your most special of native existences a virtual monopoloy on it, wouldn’t detract from the fact that the discussion regarding tourism in Burma is paternalistic (and not about you). So do you have anything else to contribute outside fo your auto-biographical details and anti intellectualism?
Tara for the record the accusation was a class traitor who was a pig-ignorant narcissistic and conceited native…thanks for adding condescension to the paternalism.
10 Andrew Walker // Nov 14, 2006 at 10:19 am
Tim, or whoever you are, I have let that last comment through just to show readers what nonsense you are capable of. Now that readers are clear on that, there will be no need for me to let through similar rants. Go back to your books.
11 Jamie // Nov 22, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Whhooaah,
Well an interesting thought from some one looking at the issue of tourism seems to have been sidelined by a confused rant against DASSK and anything else that is vaugely associated with Burma. I have a few simple points to consider.
1. We can be critical without being aggressive and exclusive in our language and style.
2. If you cant even spell DASSK (Aungsan Suchi ) it undermines others confidence that you know what you are talking about.
3. I’d be interested to see what “social revisionist policies are more extreme than the recent Thaksin govt and onbviously aimed at social control” are advocated by DASSK?
4. I apprecite the interest and involvement of anyone interested in human rights and freedom. I’d like to encourage people with constructive debate and welcome discussion on those terms.
Best Wishes
Jamie
12 Cherie // Dec 2, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Nicholas
I read your article on Burma Gateway and here with great interest.
In reference to your challenge: “However, it would be great if somebody took on this challenge.”, I’d like to bring your attention to Voices for Burma, whom Tara has already referred to.
Having been in existence for nearly 4 years, we at VFB try to quantify the impact of travel on Burma. We ask ourselves, Burmese, other travellers, academics, politicians, etc these questions every day.
The boycott isn’t black and white. It has many, many layers and shades of gray. I think it is great you are asking those questions – as we need to. We ought not to blindly accept the boycott, or should we accept blindly mass-tourism. Although I don’t think many people are suggesting the latter in any case.
Voices for Burma’s stance is that responsible, independent tourists should consider visiting Burma if and only if they want to make a positive impact to the people of Burma. If a tourist takes that position, our organisation attempts to provide them with adequate information to make informed choices whilst travelling inside Burma.
A question you didn’t ask is “what is the impact of the western-led boycott when Burma’s SE-Asian neighbours have no boycott, and account to nearly half of Burma’s tourism through their package tourism?” Yes, you did allude to this when you asked why we don’t encourage boycott inside Asia.
I’ve been in this game for over two years, and whilst we at VFB ask this question a lot to ourselves and others, we certainly don’t read that question in articles very often. So it was very refreshing to read your question. Whilst we don’t completely discourage the boycott (at least to the extent the BCUK does) we do ponder how can the boycott be effective, if we completely dismiss the largest percentage of tourists to visit Burma each year? Ironically, Voices for Burma also doesn’t engage in this space. We’d like to, but we dont have the resources.
We’d be interested in taking your questions further. However, we also need extra resources in order to do so. If anyone reads this and is interested in researching for us in order to answer some more of Nicholas’s great questions -please contact us!
Best regards
Cherie
co-Director Voices for Burma
Melbourne, Australia
13 Cherie // Dec 2, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Hi again, I’d like to clarify something:
Typo in this line:
Whilst we don’t completely discourage the boycott (at least to the extent the BCUK does) we do ponder how can the boycott be effective, if we completely dismiss the largest percentage of tourists to visit Burma each year?
I meant ‘encourage’ rather than ‘discourage” the boycott. I’d hate to be accused of implying the BCUK ‘discourages’ the boycott!! That couldn’t be any further from the truth!!
Cherie
14 charlie // Jan 2, 2007 at 4:58 am
Hi,
I am heading to burma soon and did some googling to find info about basic travel advice as well as sites such as yours detailing the moral dilemma about whether or not I will be benefitting a dictatorial regime.
Ideally, I would not like the regime to be benefitted. However, it is clear that they will benefit, at least economically in the short term, from my visit. I suppose for me it has come down to trying to choose an approach which will, on balance, result in an overall benefit (however miniscule my individual contribution will be) for the ordinary people of Burma.
I hope that, as a photographer who generally focusses on community-based issues, that I will be able to begin a project which highlights both the positive characteristics of the people and their country as well as their plight. I also intend, to the extent that I can reasonably determine their legitimacy, to spend my tourist dollars with non-government businesses which are not benefitting indirectly from any forced relocations of original inhabitants from the region.
But how am I reasonably expected to determine this last point regarding issues of forced relocation? I will do my best to research as much as is reasonably possible.
Overall, there is, for me, a point where i must rely on an inner voice which, based on my knowledge and personal values, tells me my intentions are ‘good’ (the definition of which is going to be different for all individuals).
regards,
charlie, melbourne, australia
ps. i found the exchange between aiontay and tim interesting but was dismayed to find Andrew Walker come in over the top and unilaterally decide to block any further messages from tim without any concrete reasons. Iit is not for you, andrew, to decide what readers’ interpretations of a message may be.
15 Amateur // Feb 28, 2007 at 8:53 am
Sorry, I just have come across this post now – almost two months after the last post, but I find it very interesting and with respect to the controversial debate I believe that with Burma we have a good example where universalists and particularists clash.
Alone the fact that we have two Burma campaigning organisation with different approaches (antagonising?) is something very particular to the Burma issue.
Nich, have you sent some comments to BCUK yet? Have you found any worthy contibutions in the comments posted here? I actually plan to write to BCUK, but the email is still a draft. While I am not sure about the alertness of the travellers going to Burma (I even doubt it), I firmly don’t believe that a general boycott will change the minds of the junta let alone bring them to their knees. To often we forget that national pride plays a vital role (as we see in the Iran case) and that there is China who is the biggest supplier of the regime.
The more we all point our fingers to the junta, the more it will turn to China, whose records with regards to democracy is not much better. In this moment I fail to come with a adequate metaphor, but punishment is not always the best approach as to educate. It is maybe not by chance that the US is one of the countries with the biggest grows in prison construction (I don’t need to mention the still existing capital punishment there).
To cut it short, as my lecturer in Burmese once said, “the clock goes a bit different in Myanmar”
16 New Mandala » “…put on a happy face. The face of Myanmar” // Apr 1, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] any tourist brand will always be a hard sell under that country’s current rulers. The military regime, for its [...]
17 Yashodhara // Sep 7, 2007 at 7:11 pm
As an Indian woman contemplating travel to Burma via Thailand where I live, I find this discussion about Travel Boycott amusing and your point on deterring (or not) Asian tourists to Burma relevant.
Burma is an integral part of the Asian and ASEAN fabric – a support of as well as deterrent of the military junta comes from within this faqbric. Tony Blair boycotting Burma is about as relevant as Dalai Lama boycotting travel to USA (another military regime).
Fact remains that for Asians, Burma is part of our lives (my Grandfather died fighting in the British Army against the Japanese and his body never found and so I must go). Travel is organic in that it does percolate down to microeconomies run by ordinary people. Why boycott, when one does not have solutions? It is like boycotting a party where there are drugs in the upper bedroom but the rest of the house is rocking fun and it would be great to go!
18 Eugene Lyttle // Sep 26, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Unless you can go to Burma independently, avoid Junta owned and liscenced hotel, avoid liscenced tour guides then don’t go.
Don’t say your money helps poor Burmeese people, it doesn’t.
You give the junta 100 dollars and a Burmeese gets 50cents if he’s lucky and tomorrow his family will be slaved to bild a nice road for you and a nice hotel.
The boycott is not working because people like you thinks it’s no good.
Keep out of Burma, give the Junta nothing and maybe when he is hungry, he will go away.
Leave a Comment
Please note: New Mandala encourages vigorous debate. However, for the moment we will only be publishing high-quality comments that make original contributions to discussion. There will, of course, still be space for pithy, humorous, eccentric and cheeky input. Short and sweet will usually trump long and involved. Repetitive ranting, unimaginative point-scoring and idle abuse will not be entertained. Comments which carry a real name are also more likely to be approved. Thank you for your ongoing interest and contributions.