Despite all the good we saw in Myanmar and its people, the country’s government is responsible for serious human rights violations. The military shares power with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who was formerly under house arrest for 15 years because of her pro-democracy movement. Aung San Suu Kyi became the State Counsellor and the country opened to tourism (with provincial limits) following elections in 2010, the first in 20 years – the beginning of some reforms. Visits from President Obama and Secretary Clinton, the first ever high-level trips from an American administration, added to the sense that the country was opening up for the first time in decades. While business has improved, the internet is supposedly less censored, and foreigners can visit – developments welcomed by our Mandalay tour guide – the government continues to engage in armed conflict with tribes in some provinces. Most disturbingly, the military has attacked the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Rakhine state, and hundreds of thousands have lost their villages, fled the country, or been killed. It is a genocide. We recommend reading Nick Kristof’s reporting in the New York Times to better understand the atrocities against the Rohingya. Human rights advocates have called for Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Prize to be revoked for her downplaying and failure to stop the events. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has appropriately revoked an award it gave in 2012. We grappled with whether to visit Myanmar because of these events, ultimately deciding that most of our spending would directly support business owners, rather than the government. Unfortunately, while not on as large a scale as the Rohingya crisis, human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings occur in other Southeast Asian countries, so the dilemmas of how to visit ethically and whether to visit at all are always present. Because we have met wonderful, welcoming people everywhere who demonstrate that a country is not synonymous with its government, we usually do not avoid travel for political reasons. We likewise hope that people will not avoid the United States because of anti-foreigner and anti-LGBT sentiment from some officials in our government. Engagement, exchange, and mutual understanding will hopefully counteract these problems. In Myanmar, we witnessed a lot of child labor, such as tea house servers younger than 15 and brick molders in their teens, and we feel especially lucky to have been born in a free country and have access to education. The thick pollution made our throats itch and eyes water – which gave us even more appreciation for environmental protection, which should not be taken for granted. These challenges can be mitigated by tourism, so deciding whether to visit is not straightforward, and there are compelling reasons for and against visiting. Uncornered Market shares some tips for ethical travel in Myanmar, which we found helpful when planning our trip:
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September 2018
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