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BURMA RELATED NEWS - May 24, 2003.
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HEADLINES
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Reuters - Myanmar
jails three democracy activists
AP - Aide says Suu
Kyi facing continued harassment by junta during
AP - Bones, human
remains suspected to be of six missing Myanmar
AFP - Myanmar urges
Thailand to investigate deaths of six workers
IB - Editorial
-Dhaka-Yangon ties
BBC News - Burma
jails activists
Bkk Post - Six
Burmese slain, burned
Bkk Post - Chavalit
pins blame for blasts on UWSA
Asian Tribune -
Myanmar, Bangladesh Agree to Set Free Each Others
Prisoners
WP - Burma in the
Balance
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Myanmar
jails three democracy activists
YANGON, May 24
(Reuters) - Three members of
Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party were sentenced to two-year
prison terms for political ''mistakes,'' apparently including inciting farmers,
a party spokesman said on Saturday.
''It was said they made some
mistakes in carrying out routine organisational activities,'' said U Lwin,
spokesman for the National League for Democracy (NLD).
''Authorities
reportedly found some documents criticising government policy and agitating
farmers,'' he said.
He did not elaborate but said the three were
sentenced a few days ago.
Suu Kyi's NLD swept to a landslide election
victory in 1990 but has never been allowed govern by the military, which has
ruled Myanmar since 1962.
U Lwin said NLD legal advisers were planning
to appeal on behalf of the three as soon as possible.
International
human rights group Amnesty International says there are about 1,500 political
prisoners in Myanmar.
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Aide says Suu Kyi facing continued harassment by junta
during
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) _ Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced
constant intimidation and harassment by a group aligned to the military junta
during her ongoing travels in northern Myanmar, her party spokesman said
Saturday.
Suu Kyi is on a monthlong trip to the Kachin state, her
seventh political tour of the country since being released by the ruling junta
from house arrest last year as part of a reconciliation effort that has since
stalled.
But at least two of her previous trips have also been marred by
allegations of harassment, provoking criticism that the junta is not serious
about allowing Suu Kyi the political freedoms it had promised.
U Lwin,
the spokesman of her National League for Democracy Party, said the harassment
was being carried out by members of the government-sponsored Union Solidarity
Development Association.
``Throughout the trip, Aung San Suu Kyi and
party members met constant intimidation and obstruction by members of the USDA.
Before entering the towns, USDA members wait for Suu Kyi with signboards which
say 'Oppose those pessimists and stooges who depend on external elements,''' U
Lwin said.
In some places, USDA members carrying swords and sticks
blocked the road, he said.
The party complained to the authorities but
no action was taken against the USDA members, he said. The government has in the
past denied sponsoring harassment and obstruction of Suu Kyi, but it did not
comment on the latest allegation.
The USDA was formed in 1993 as a
social organization and reportedly has 19 million members, avowedly loyal to the
junta.
U Lwin said Suu Kyi has so far opened nine party branch offices
including the township party office in the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina,
since she began her trip on May 6, the first anniversary of her release from
19-months house arrest.
She will open five more party branches before
she returns to the capital on June 4, in time for a meeting with the special
U.N. envoy Razali Ismail. He is scheduled to arrive in Myanmar on June 6 to
rekindle the reconciliation process, which he had helped initiate in October
2000.
The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a
pro-democracy uprising. It called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over
power even though Suu Kyi's NLD won overwhelmingly.
It still has made no
major concessions to the NLD except releasing a few hundred political prisoners.
More than 1,000 political detainees still remain in jails.
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Bones, human remains suspected to be of six missing
Myanmar
MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) _ Police in western Thailand have found
charred human remains and bones in a jungle, believed to be those of six Myanmar
migrant workers who disappeared earlier this month.
Also found with the
remains were tires and some bullet shells, suggesting that the victims were
killed before their bodies were set on fire, Mae Sot police chief Col. Sonkran
Sankakorn told reporters late Friday.
He said the remains are almost
certainly those of the six men working on a construction project, who went
missing May 14 in Mae Sot area, 370 kilometers (230 miles) northwest of Bangkok.
``The culprits will be arrested within 15 days,'' Sonkran said.
He quoted witnesses as saying that the six men were allegedly beaten up
by a group of Thai men on the day they went missing.
It is suspected the
attackers were aides of local gangsters, who kidnapped the Myanmar men. The
motive is believed to be either extortion or revenge as the Myanmar men had
quarreled with a group of Thai workers earlier.
The search for the
missing men was launched after their relatives complained to the National Human
Rights Commission.
More than 1 million Myanmar migrants work in Thailand
in low-paying menial jobs. Physical abuse and discrimination of the workers is
rampant.
The abuse was highlighted by a much publicized case of a
domestic woman worker who was beaten and burned by her employers last year. She
died after being dumped on a roadside.
Also last year, 16 Myanmar
workers were killed and their bodies thrown in a creek near Mae Sot. No one has
been punished in either case.
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Myanmar urges Thailand to investigate deaths of six
workers
BANGKOK, May 24 (AFP) - Myanmar has urged Thai authorities to
launch an investigation into the deaths of six Myanmar migrant workers after
their charred remains were found in northern Thailand, an official said
Saturday.
Relatives of the dead, who had been missing for more than a
week, have said they were last seen in the custody of police, who had beaten
them.
"This is a terrible crime and the Myanmar government wants to know
exactly what happened," a senior foreign ministry official told AFP, urging
Thailand to make its report as soon as possible.
A letter has been sent
to the Thai foreign ministry calling for a full investigation, the official
said. Myanmar also wants all suspects prosecuted and to be kept informed about
the investigation.
Relatives of the men said in a letter to Thailand's
National Human Rights Commission this week that the six had been beaten by
police.
"The missing persons were last seen in the custody of uniformed
Thai police. These same police had administered beatings on the six men after
other Thai nationals had beaten the men earlier," the letter said.
Thai
police officials, who said the bodies were discovered in Mae Sot province
bordering Myanmar on Wednesday, said a probe into the incident was
continuing.
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Independent-Bangladesh
24- 05
-2003.
Editorial -Dhaka-Yangon ties
Burying
the hatchet over the influx of a quarter million Rohingya refugees who entered
into Bangladesh from Myanmar in 1990s and gradually returned under UNHCR
mediation (some 20,000 are still staying in camps), Bangladesh and Myanmar have
resumed border security negotiations broken off in 1993. Chief of Bangladesh
Rifles Major General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury and Director General of Myanmar
Immigration Department U Maung Htay have concluded three-day talks in Dhaka
aided by respective country teams. Process of repatriation of 11,500 more
Rohingya refugees this month is underway.
The border talks for security
and cooperation followed the Dhaka visit of Myanmar's Head of Government, Senior
General Than Shwe and return visit to Yangon of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
During the 10-year period of border stand-off between Bangladesh and Myanmar, a
gun-running racket reportedly developed, operating from the Andaman Sea in the
Bay of Bengal off the coast lines of Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh up to the
Naaf river that runs between Myanmar and Bangladesh, mainly to feed Northeast
Indian and Myanmar rebel pockets. Bangladesh and Myanmar have now agreed on
steps to stop smuggling of arms through their common land and sea borders, which
stretch over 100 kilometres of marine boundary and 300 kilometres of land
boundary. "We do not know the source, but we will work against such
(gun-running) activities" was the common resolve as voiced by the Bangladesh
Rifles Director General to newsmen.
Proliferation of small arms in South
Asia is a serious problem affecting law and order and regional stability.
Cooperation between Bangladesh and Myanmar in border administration will
contribute significantly to the arrest of small arms proliferation in South
Asia, and also create climate for economic bridge building between Bangladesh
and the ASEAN countries. Border trade between Bangladesh and Myanmar is growing
fast. With a safe land and sea border between the countries, not only will there
be rapid expansion of trade and tourism, but also rapid improvement in regional
environment for capital inflow and economic development.
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BBC News - Saturday, 24 May,
2003
Burma jails activists
By Larry Jagan
BBC Burma analyst
The Burmese military
authorities have sentenced 10 members of the pro-democracy movement to stiff
jail terms for organising public protests and being involved in clandestine
activities.
The political activists were all members of Aung San Suu
Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) and included a member of parliament.
The sentences, ranging from two to 28 years, come just as the military
government appeared to be trying to meet the opposition leader on her return
from travelling to the north of Burma.
Three senior members of Aung San
Suu Kyi's party in the west of the country, including the elected MP, have been
given two years' for helping farmers to write protest letters to the government
demanding the return of their land that had been confiscated.
The rice
fields were impounded after the farmers had failed to pay their taxes.
Six other party workers who were arrested with them earlier this week
are still in detention.
Fresh doubt
Seven other
NLD members in Rangoon were jailed for between five and 28 years for contact
with an underground opposition group along the border with Thailand.
The
sentences come just as the military junta had hinted it wanted to meet Aung San
Suu Kyi again after a seven-month interlude.
This had raised hopes that
the dialogue process between the opposition leader and the military government
might resume, after being stalled for months.
The UN envoy to Burma,
Razali Ismail, who brokered the talks between the two sides, is also scheduled
to return to Rangoon soon.
But these fresh arrests cast doubt on how
serious the military regime is about political dialogue.
Rangoon
recently released more than 20 political prisoners, giving the impression that
it was prepared to compromise with the opposition.
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Bangkok Post - Saturday 24 May
2003
Six Burmese slain, burned
Supamart
Kasem
The remains of six Burmese workers who were
murdered and burnt after they went missing last Wednesday were found in a forest
near the border of Mae Sot district yesterday.
The killers are believed
to be the aides of local influential figures.
Mae Sot police found bones,
burnt tyres and clothes in a bamboo forest at Ban Huay Kalok, tambon Mae Pa
yesterday after relatives complained to the National Human Rights Commission
about their disappearance.
The men were identified as Min Hein, 28, Thein
Naing 33, Aye Min, 22, Ah Nge Lay, 19, Maung Maung, 24, and Ah Nyar Thar,
22.
Mae Sot police chief Pol Col Songkran Sangkhakorn said the Burmese
workers were captured by aides of local influential people, after they
quarrelled with a group of Thai workers in Ban Huay Kalok.
Police believe
the men were shot by at least five assailants armed with .38mm and .45mm guns
and their bodies were burnt on tyres.
The police obtained photos of the
victims taken before the killings which showed some were handcuffed.
``We
can identify most of the murderers backed by local influential figures. We have
questioned witnesses and sent the bullets and other evidence to the Scientific
Crime Detection Division,'' Pol Col Songkran said.
The national police
commissioner and his deputy had been told. Human rights commissioner Charan
Dittha-apichai would inspect the scene.
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Bangkok Post - Saturday 24 May 2003
Chavalit pins blame for blasts on UWSA
Shan lack
capacity to attack targets, he says
Yuwadee Tunyasiri and
Subin Khuenkaew
The United Wa State Army was probably behind the
bombings in Burma's Tachilek town on Wednesday, said Deputy Prime Minister
Chavalit Yongchaiyudh yesterday.
Initially, the anti-Rangoon Shan State
Army (SSA) was suspected as the bomb attacks coincided with the 45th anniversary
of the Shan resistance movement.
But Gen Chavalit said yesterday he did
not think the SSA had the capacity to attack targets outside areas under its
control.
The bombings were more likely to be the work of Wa minority
people angered over their relocation from border areas, he said but did not
elaborate.
Security has been beefed up in Tachilek, a border town located
opposite Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district, in the wake of Wednesday's bomb blasts
at a government building and a statue of Burma's ancient King Bayinnaung. The
explosions left four people dead, including two Burmese officials.
On
Thursday, a convoy of asphalt-carrying trucks escorted by Burmese soldiers were
ambushed by an unknown group about 27 km from Tachilek town. Three truck drivers
were killed.
Gen Chavalit said the attackers appeared to know the area
well and had selected their targets with precision.
He added that Rangoon
was well aware that the recent attacks in Burma were not launched by minority
rebels operating from Thai soil.
A security source said the mastermind of
the attacks in the Tachilek area might be Bao Yu Hua, the youngest brother of
BaoYouxiang, a commander of the United Wa State Army (UWSA).
Bao Yu Hua
was known to be at odds with Wei Hsueh-kang, commander of the UWSA's 171th
special corps, as well as with the Rangoon government, the source
said.
Late last year Burmese government troops clashed with Bao Yu Hua's
forces at his Khong Kong border camp, also known as Camp 486, which was believed
to house a major drug-producing plant.
There had been mounting conflict
between Bao Yu Hua and Wei Hsueh-kang in the past several months, the source
said.
Wei Hsueh-kang was known to have close ties with the military junta
in Rangoon.
``Since Wei Hsueh-kang is widely known to have close
relationship with the junta, it is totally unlikely for him to be behind the
(recent) attacks. He would gain nothing,'' noted a veteran border watcher who
said Wei Hsueh-kang's forces were in total control of the Burmese border area
opposite Chiang Rai.
Bao Yu Hua was said to be ``very unhappy'' over
Rangoon's order for him to move his people back to Pang Hsang on the border with
China.
Bao Yu Hua moved his forces and thousands under his control down
from Pang Hsang in late 1998 for resettlement in an area bordering Thailand.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Asian Tribune
Date :
2003-05-24
Myanmar, Bangladesh Agree to Set Free Each Others
Prisoners
Dhaka, May 24: Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh
have agreed to step up measures for the release of prisoners held in each
other's countries for illegally crossing the common frontier, Interior Ministry
sources said Friday.
The agreement was reached at the end of three-day
border talks in the capital Dhaka between the Chief of Myanmar Immigration U
Maung Htay and the Head of Bangladeshi Border Guards Major Gen Jahangir Alam
Chowdhury.
The two sides described the talks as friendly and cordial and
aimed at improving bilateral relations which had run into trouble over the mass
migration of Myanmar Muslims into Bangladesh from the bordering Arakan state,
DPA reported.
Official sources said the prisoners to be exchanged were
mostly fishermen from both nations who had mistakenly overstepped the maritime
boundary in the bay of Bengal.
The two countries signed a memorandum of
understanding which endorses a decision to hold bilateral talks at the senior
government level every six months to sort out border disputes.
Myanmar
and Bangladesh also agreed to hold regular flag meetings between local level
commanders of border security forces of the two neighbors to curb illegal
migration and cross-border smuggling of drugs and arms. It was the first time in
a decade that the two countries had sat down for border talks, with the last
ones being held in the Myanmar capital Yangon (Rangoon) in 1993.
- Tehran
Times -
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The Washington Post
Burma in the
Balance
Should you go? The politics of travel to Asia's most
controversial destination.
By Steve
Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 25, 2003;
Page P01
It would easy to mistake this postcard-perfect sunrise
over Burma's ancient city of Bagan for a travel cliche. But it's not a cliche.
It's a metaphor. Take a closer look:
A rosé horizon backlights a black
skyline of spires and domes. A thin morning fog lies on the plain, torn by
temples that rise beyond number above the treetops. They stretch to every
horizon, squat pagodas to soaring Buddhist cathedrals, more than 2,000 shrines
dating to an 11th-century religious building boom. Watching the tide of dawn
creep across this antique world is like meditating on a just-opening lotus
blossom.
In the quiet, a bulge detaches itself from a temple to the
north and floats smoothly into the brightening sky. The bulge resolves into
three separate hot-air balloons that drift tranquilly among the holy ramparts. A
flare of gas lights up a cluster of tourists peering over a gondola, followed a
beat later by the soft roar of propane. From high on a temple ledge, other
foreigners click shutters and murmur appreciations at the surreal and beautiful
scene of -- here comes the metaphor -- tourism taking off in Burma.
More
and more international visitors are making it to this long-shunned corner of
Southeast Asia. The government's own statistics -- notoriously suspect -- show
almost a half-million foreigners arriving last year, more than doubling since it
began a major tourism push in 1996. No matter how inflated those figures,
outside observers agree that tourism is climbing, particularly after last year's
bombing in Bali sent travelers in search of alternate Asian
beaches.
"Last year was our best year; we were up 20 percent," says
Juergen Voss, the German manager of the high-end Bagan Hotel, a plush resort on
the banks of the Irrawaddy River and in Bagan's archaeological
district.
As he sips club soda on a hotel terrace, small groups of German
and French guests arrive at the hotel's masonry gates, mostly retirees on
package tours. They climb down from donkey carts, patting the animals and
tipping their local drivers for a few hours of sightseeing among temples as
stirring as better-known sites like Angkor Wat or Tikal.
"Myanmar is
becoming very popular," says Voss. "It's a completely new destination for
Westerners."
More people are coming, but the question is, should they?
Arguably more than any other country, Burma presents the conscientious traveler
with a dilemma: Will my visit help or hurt the local people?
Burma, also
known as Myanmar, enjoys both pearl and pariah status in Southeast Asia. It's a
largely preindustrial preserve of stirring panoramas, ornate Buddhist
architecture, connoisseur-class artisanship and culture that is deep and
welcoming, even by the graceful standards of the region. And it's all under the
control of what human rights activists say is one of the most vicious
governments on Earth.
Many of those activists -- led by Burma's own
indomitable opposition hero, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi -- say
tourist dollars prop up an all-controlling regime that's guilty of torturing and
killing dissidents, wholesale narcotics trafficking, forcing citizens to build
roads and hotels, conscripting children to fight in the army and holding more
than 1,000 political prisoners. But others, who also condemn the atrocities,
argue that tourism is just the kind of "engagement" with the outside world that
will improve the lives of some ordinary Burmese, increase global awareness of
Burma's plight and, ultimately, hasten the regime's fall.
"My opinion is that
tourists should go," says David Steinberg, director of Asian studies at
Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. "I'm a great admirer of Aung San Suu
Kyi, and I'd very much like to see her come to power. But I disagree with her on
this point. Tourism provides a rare channel of communication for the Burmese, it
provides jobs and it allows foreigners to learn about this
culture."
Jeremy Woodrum doesn't buy it. "They're one of the world's most
brutal military regimes, cut and dried, and tourism provides them with a
significant amount of hard currency," says Woodrum, director of the Washington
office of the Free Burma Coalition. "We think tourists who travel to Burma play
right into the regime's hands."
Pagodas and Politics
The flying
tourist loop in Burma is small and well established, limited to the few areas
where foreigners are allowed to wander: Bagan for the ancient temples; Mandalay,
Burma's second-largest city, for a brief homage to Kipling; and finally over to
the floating villages of lovely Inle Lake. (More recently, many visitors are
adding a side trip to Ngapali or one of the other beach resorts appearing on the
Andaman Coast.)
But almost all visits begin in the capital, known as
Rangoon to Westerners and Yangon to locals. And all visits begin with a
government shakedown: Foreigners at the airport must exchange $200 for an
equivalent handful of Monopoly script known as Foreign Exchange Credits, a
dollar-pegged tourist currency accepted only by major hotels, restaurants, shops
and a few savvy cab drivers. (Reports are common that officials will, for a
little side gratuity, lower the $200 minimum substantially.) The street currency
is the kyat (pronounced "chat"), with a laughable official exchange rate of
about six kyat per dollar. The real rate, available through ubiquitous freelance
money changers and hotel concierges, fluctuates around 1,000 to 1,200 kyat to
the dollar.
The streets of central Rangoon are crowded with bicycles,
cars and trucks overloaded with passengers. Buddhists monks are everywhere,
walking the streets and jammed robe-to-robe in pickup truck beds. Rangoon feels
like a slow-motion version of Hanoi before its boom -- tree-lined, lush and
largely decrepit. (It's without Hanoi's handsome French architecture but also
without its nerve-jangling swarms of motor scooters.) Near the crowded downtown,
bottles with flowers line the curb as a signal that someone has rationed
gasoline to sell. At one corner, evening headlights play across a massive tree
trunk that's draped in vines and packed with small figurines and fairylike
houses -- the fanciful shrines to spritelike Buddhist spirits called
nats.
On Mahabandoola Street, shabby taxis wait for Westerners to emerge
from the labyrinthine Scott Market, the main tourist shopping zone for silks,
carvings and Burma's signature lacquerware bowls and platters. A couple of boys
scurry across a dangerous intersection, struggling under the weight of the
10-foot wooden sign they carry -- it reads "Neurosurgery" in neat, hand-painted
letters. Nearby, in a vacant lot, a group of shirtless young men perform
gravity-defying tricks with a chinlon, a woven cane ball that players keep aloft
with feet only. It's what Hacky Sack would look like if they played Hacky Sack
in "The Matrix."
Rangoon's biggest tourist attraction by far is the colossal
Shwedagon Pagoda, a mountainous Buddhist shrine that dominates the capital
horizon. A group of a dozen Westerners, having paid their $5 fee and dutifully
removed their shoes, shuffles along in bare feet as a backward-walking Burmese
narrates in French. Like most men in Burma, he wears a Western-style button-up
shirt over the traditional wraparound sarong called a longhi. Many of the women,
even the urbanites of Rangoon, wear the traditional Burmese swipe of pale mud on
their cheeks, a natural sunscreen made from bark called thanakha.
The
circling tourists flow slowly around the many locals engaged in a hundred acts
of reverence -- palms together, heads to the ground -- in front of countless
placid Buddha statues. Shwedagon is very much a working holy place for the
Burmese. Its centerpiece is a bell-shaped golden spire that towers over Royal
Lake. The surrounding open-air complex is filled with acres of smaller shrines
and domes called stupas. Tourists and supplicants alike enter through one of
four grand arcades, long staircases lined with vendors selling flowers and
souvenirs. The air is rich with chanting, incense and the coo of doves roosting
on curlicue rooflines. Bells jingle and the occasional boom of a gong startles
the birds and shivers the ribs of tourists.
It's tranquil and grand. But
some of the larger Buddha heads are wrung with jarring halos of Vegas-style
flashing lights. And it's all so supersized, you wonder if this is the cathedral
Oral Roberts might build if he were to accept Siddhartha as his personal savior.
A sign advises foreigners that "it is not allowed to wear the short pants,
shameless dresses and not good looking dresses."
A middle-aged man in a
green plaid longhi watches Shwedagon's evening exodus. "How do you find
Myanmar?" he asks. "It is very beautiful, yes? Do people in America think
Myanmar is a bad place?"
It's a question you get from almost every
Burmese you talk to, an eager request for impressions. This man, like most
locals interviewed for this story, is willing to discuss the country's problems
if his name is not printed. Typically, he condemns the government -- "They are
only for themselves." -- and whispers devotion to Suu Kyi -- "She is our great
lady." Asked if he thinks tourists should come to Burma, he seems surprised by
the question. "They should come," he says. His brother works at a hotel, he says
by way of explanation.
Whether or not they agree with her on the tourism
boycott, Suu Kyi is clearly -- if quietly -- beloved by the Burmese. After her
party won a landslide victory in the 1990 general election, the junta ignored
the vote and put her under house arrest until 1995. She was arrested again in
2000 and released last May with a promise of meaningful political negotiations
with the regime. But a year has passed, no real negotiations have begun and Suu
Kyi continues to be harassed. One tourist from New York reported walking through
Bagan with her Burmese guide and being invited in for tea by a local woman. "I
had my guidebook and there was a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi in it," she says.
"The government media never shows her, so they all gathered around and their
faces just lighted up."
Ironically, Suu Kyi herself has become something of a
Rangoon tourist attraction. Taxi drivers coming in from the airport will vaguely
point out the road along Inya Lake that leads to her house or her opposition
party's headquarters a few blocks from Shwedagon. The storefront office, next to
a woodcarver's shop, is always under the watch of sunglass-wearing military
intelligence officers. Still, it's something of a dare among informed
backpackers to go in and purchase small handmade pins baring the likeness of the
laureate. I visited the office without incident, but other tourists have
reported being stopped and questioned afterward, and having their Suu Kyi
souvenirs confiscated.
"Many, many people are becoming dependent on
tourism," says a Burmese who works in the travel industry. This person recalls
the period of violent political oppression in 1988 when tourism completely dried
up. "In Bagan, there is almost nothing but tourism. People in Bagan were in the
river looking for gold. Without tourists to buy lacquerware, there is no money
for food."
Today in Bagan, a short flight from Rangoon, there are plenty
of tourists to buy lacquerware, hire donkey carts and shop the many
micro-markets that locals set up around the temples. Many of the peddlers hawk
their wares inside the shrines, with T-shirts, knockoff ceramic idols and
calligraphy laid out for sale at the very feet of giant Buddhas. Often it's
young girls doing the selling, wheedling and haggling with an ad hoc vocabulary
of English, French, German and Japanese. "Good price, good price." For many,
it's the only schooling they get.
A few years ago, the government
uprooted the main village of Bagan and moved it a few kilometers outside the
tourist zone where most of the temples are concentrated. But every day, dozens
of locals walk or bike back to sell to the tourists or work in the hotels. In
some of the major stupas, like the giant Shwezigon Paya, vendors push with
surprising aggressiveness -- sometimes turning a sales pitch into a plea for
money.
Even so, with literally thousands of ancient structures packed
into the region, it's easy to find solitude in one of the world's great
archaeological wonders.
"It's as good as I've seen anywhere," says Gerald
Lewis, a well-traveled officer of a U.S. Christian relief agency based in
Bangkok. "I'm surprised by how intact it all is."
Lewis and his wife,
visiting on a weekend vacation, are staying at the Bagan Hotel. It's a
comfortable place of rolling lawns, huge tropical plantings and polished teak
rooms. During the high season from January through April, the hotel is often
completely booked. This weekend, it's filled with three separate bus-based
groups of Germans. ("Here come the Panzer Divisions" is how one waggish Irish
guest announced a group's arrival at the lavish outdoor breakfast buffet.) The
hotel is privately run, as is the major hotel next door and most of the other
properties in the region. Once all government-controlled, the regime recently
opened the door to private foreign investment, and Japanese, Thai and German
companies came in. Although the government owns most of the land and all hotels
must have a Burmese partner, Voss, the Bagan Hotel's manager, insists the
government takes nothing from his revenues beyond a 10 percent tax. It's a
promising development, but democracy activists say the regime still has ways of
getting a cut.
"There just aren't many people with money to invest in
these enterprises who aren't in some way connected to the regime or the drug
syndicates," says John Jackson, head of Britain's influential Burma Campaign.
"Burma just doesn't have a very broad-based middle class."
Reflections on
Inle Lake
One hotel that seems truly independent from the regime is
perched on skinny bamboo pilings at one end of another major Burmese tourist
zone, Inle Lake. Reachable only by boat, Golden Island Cottages is a spider web
of long sturdy piers connecting dozens of bamboo bungalows to a roomy central
lodge. Each cottage sports a private veranda, an immensely pleasing place to
muse on the sunrise over the lake's misty waters and, even better, the lake's
unique fleet of fishermen. An Inle fisherman, using a huge conical net, is
famous for the one-footed way he finesses his wooden dugout around the shallows;
with his paddle wrapped around one ankle he works the net with his free hand
(think of how you wield a broom wrapped around one arm with the dustpan in the
other).
The cottages were built not by the military regime but by one of
the many local tribes that has waged civil war against it. The Pa'O people, from
the mountains surrounding Inle Lake, had been fighting an armed insurgency when
the government allowed them to build this hotel as part of a ceasefire in the
mid-1990s. The whole community donated money, labor and materials, and it opened
in 1996 with 40 rooms. Now, the hotel employs 58 people and is second only to
jade mining as a source of revenue for the Pa'O tribe. A committee of 30 elders
dispenses the money for road building, scholarships and other basic needs
Rangoon can't meet.
"This money goes directly to our people," says a Pa'O
who is part of hotel management. "We didn't even have electricity before
tourists started coming."
The hotel is nearly full. This time it's a
British tour group that arrives in canoe after canoe, each being greeted at the
landing by a traditional drum and cymbal band. (Every arriving boat gets this
treatment; it's very welcoming but a bit much if you're just dashing back for
some forgotten sunscreen.) Over the next two days -- in long canoes driven by
unmuffled two-stroke motors -- the Brits will ply the lake's chief attractions:
villages built over the water; whole farms constructed on floating rows of sod;
silk looming workshops, blacksmith shops, cigar factories; an overly touristy
floating market; and finally, a floating monastery where monks with a lot of
time on their hands have taught house cats to jump through hoops.
"My
favorite was the jumping cats," says Daniel Hill, a 15-year-old from Melbourne,
Australia, sitting in the hotel's open-air dining room. It's past dusk and the
red and yellow lights on the cottages cast long neon streaks across the black
water. His mother, Rikki Hill, brought Daniel and his sister to Burma after
reading that tourism was beginning to open here. She was aware of the boycott
but decided to come anyway.
"By the end of two weeks, yes, I think we've
contributed to the local economy," she says. "It's all well and good for people
to get on a high horse, but some of those same people will go to China or
Indonesia or Malaysia where things are also not too good."
It's a fair
question. Ask an activist why Burma deserves a tourism boycott when other
oppressive states don't -- China, Tibet and Cuba come to mind as popular
destinations with dodgy human rights records -- and they cite the dynamic role
of Suu Kyi.
"There are three key factors that make Burma unique," says
Jackson of Burma Campaign. "You have an elected party that's never been allowed
to take power that is asking people not to come. You have a government that
tries to promote tourism specifically to raise desperately needed hard currency.
And you have systemic, pervasive human rights abuses used to build the very
infrastructure tourists use when they go there."
How firmly committed Suu
Kyi is to the boycott is a matter of debate, according to Western diplomatic
sources in Rangoon. Clearly, her party is not about to give up any bargaining
points before the regime begins long-promised, long-delayed negotiations. But
Suu Kyi has softened her opposition to certain kinds of humanitarian aid to
Burma. And on tourism, her spokesman seemed to allow a little wiggle room in a
recent phone interview, suggesting that some kinds of targeted tourism are more
acceptable than others.
"My party's official position is that unless we
have a dialogue [with the government] we will not change our stance," said U
Lwin. "My personal view is that it is up to the individual tourist. Does their
money go to the local people? Sometimes, yes. But most of them are not serious.
They are looking at the countryside on a bus."
"In Burma," he says,
unnecessarily, "things are a little bit different."
Details: Burma
The call to boycott tourism to Burma is voluntary, not official. The U.S.
government maintains strict trade sanctions against the country but doesn't
prohibit travel there. And Burma is not on the State Department's current list
of countries travelers should avoid. However, the department does warn about
political tensions: "Popular unrest and violence continue to be possible. U.S.
citizens traveling in Burma should exercise caution and check with the U.S.
Embassy for an update on the current situation." Details:
www.travel.state.gov/burma.html.
For more information on the boycott,
contact the Free Burma Coalition in Washington (202-547-5985,
www.freeburmacoalition.org) or Britain's Burma Campaign
(www.burmacampaign.org.uk).
If you decide to visit Burma, here are some
things to know.
GETTING THERE: Several major Asian airlines fly into
Rangoon, including Thai Airlines via Bangkok and Singapore Air's Silk Air
through Singapore. Round-trip fares from Washington are all over the map, but
seem to range within $2,000 to $5,000. One way to save money is to shop for
bargains to Asia, then add on the relatively cheap hop to Rangoon (about $200
from Bangkok right now).
VISAS: Burma grants 28-day tourist visas for
$20; contact the Myanmar Embassy in Washington (2300 S St. NW,
202-332-9044).
CURRENCY: At the airport in Rangoon, all arriving
foreigners are required to exchange $200 in cash for dollar-pegged Foreign
Exchange Credits, which are accepted by hotels, larger restaurants and shops.
For the kyat, the official exchange rate of six to a dollar is universally
ignored in favor of street rates closer to 1,000 to 1,200 kyats to the dollar.
WHERE TO STAY: Whether Burmese hotels are controlled, directly or
indirectly, by the military regime is a matter of mystery and debate. Here are
some that purport to be as independent as possible: the Savoy (129 Dhammazedi
Rd., www.savoy-myanmar.com) in Rangoon, pricey but excellent at $210 a night
during the high (dry) season of January to April; the Bagan Hotel
(www.myanmars.net/baganhotel; about $55 a night in high season), a comfortable
tropical hotel in the archeological zone of Burma's ancient city; and Golden
Island Cottages (011-95-1-571513; $42 a night), built by a local hill tribe on
pilings in Inle Lake.
WHAT TO EAT: Burmese food reflects the country's
crossroads status between Thailand and India -- rich curried stews, chicken,
fish and pork satays, stir-fried vegetables. Excellent Thai and Chinese food is
also readily available, particularly in Rangoon. Market lunches cost about $3
per person, nice restaurants, $10; five-star places, $20.
TOURS: The
easiest, and probably most common, way to visit Burma is with one of the many
package tours. Two that reportedly make in-country arrangements in a politically
sensitive way are Rangoon-based Myanmar Travel (www.myanmartravel.net), offering
eight-day and longer tours staring at $860 per person, double occupancy; and New
York-based Absolute Asia (800-736-8187, www.absoluteasia.com), with eight-day
itineraries beginning at $1,860.
Activists, however, say group travel
often sends the most hard currency to the regime. Independent travel, on the
other hand, allows tourists more chances to target their spending. You may have
to make some of your plans after you arrive. Many Rangoon travel agents are
savvy and sensitive enough to help you book, for example, privately run Air
Mandalay over government-run Myanmar Airways; ask a hotel concierge to recommend
a travel agent.
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