Mac's Musings

Rotten Regimes

You know a regime is really rotten when it doesn't actually care two teak logs about its international image. Step forward Burma. The junta which has ruled for 40+ years almost seems to take pleasure in defying the international community.

Yet UK companies and individuals continue to prop up this ruthless regime which is quite happy to gun down its own people. For example, who on earth would defend the idea of taking a vacation there? Steppes Travel, it seems. The company is one of a number of tour operators offering happy holidays in Burma. And 10,000 Brits actually go to the nobly-named Myanmar Republic each year.

Paul Craven, a director of Steppes Travel, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph, saying: 'If people say they are not going to Burma because of the human rights record, why do they go to other countries that have similar records? China shot dead some Tibetans for crossing the border last year but people still go to China.'

Why indeed! But two wrongs don't make it right, Mr Craven. And we should very definitely be putting pressure on China, without whom the Burmese regime could not survive. With the Beijing Olympics coming up, China is just a teeny-weeny bit more susceptible to world opinion.

But let's stay with jolly holidays in that bloody country. Mr Craven and potential trippers should be well aware that human rights organisations have well-documented evidence that tourist infrastructure in Burma is quite often built with slave and child labour.

Dissidents are begging Western countries not to buy goods from their country and not to travel there. Steppes Travel and any other countries doing business with Burma should learn the lessons of history. Remember the apartheid regime in South Africa? All the same arguments were advanced at the time by companies big and small who were trading there.

Those who didn't listen - including giants like Barclays Bank initially - suffered a public relations catastrophe and in many cases a financial bloody nose too as ethical consumers deserted them.

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