UK Tour Operators Linked To Burma’s Military Regime

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Use of hotels and resorts includes tourism establishments blacklisted under European Community (EC) trade sanctions because they are owned or directed by members of the regime and regime associates. It also includes tourism establishments which are managed by the regime in partnership with foreign companies under joint venture schemes.

“It is the responsibility of tour operators to ensure that they abide by the European legislation and do not provide financial benefits to the military dictatorship, which continues to perpetrate appalling human rights abuses against its own people. Given lack of transparency in Burma and the complex overlap between state- and private-owned enterprises, the best way to do this is simply to stop trading with Burma”.

- Tricia Barnett, Director of Tourism Concern, says:

Information regarding blacklisted individuals and their respective tourism enterprises is freely available in the public domain. Ironically, the majority of UK operators frequenting these hotels and resorts state that they avoid using businesses with links to the state authorities. “Tour operators should not provide misleading information to the general public about their ethical credentials. They need to do their homework about which hotels and resorts are known to be profiting the regime”, says Barnett.

European legislation

The European legislation set out in Council Regulation 194/2008 is directly applicable in the UK. However, a loophole in UK law, caused by the Government’s failure to update the Statutory Instrument which makes it an offence to breach the Regulation, means that any violation by a tour operator can currently go unpunished. The Treasury has confirmed to Tourism Concern that they are in the process of updating the Statutory Instrument, but would not say when it would be implemented.

A breach of the EC Regulation occurs where a tour operator knowingly provides either ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ financial benefits to the regime or regime associates, as listed under the EC trade ban. The Treasury has confirmed that payments to blacklisted tourism businesses could be regarded as ‘indirectly’ for the benefit of their blacklisted owners and directors in certain circumstances. This includes, for example, where the owner or director receives a salary, a loan, or some other diversion of funds from the tourism enterprise in question. “Although it’s impossible to know whether these high-powered individuals are deriving any such ‘indirect’ funds from their luxury resorts and hotels, common sense tells us that they’re only going to be involved in the tourism business if they’re making good money from it”, states Barnett.

Tourism Concern’s briefing, ‘How UK tour operators are supporting Burma’s military regime through tourism‘, also identifies additional hotels and resorts that are reportedly owned by blacklisted individuals, but which are yet to be specified under the European trade ban. Hotels and resorts managed under joint venture schemes with the Burmese state authorities are not currently included in the ban.

Tourism Concern is calling on the EC to update the existing Council Regulation to include all tourism enterprises owned by blacklisted individuals. It is also calling on the UK Government to close the current loophole in the law and provide adequate guidance to UK tour operators to ensure that they do not risk breaching the EC Regulation.

Notes on Burma:

• The development of tourism in Burma is directly linked to mass human rights abuses. ‘Visit Myanmar’ year in 1996 was a deliberate strategy by the military regime to generate foreign currency through international tourism. Over a million people were forcibly displaced from their homes with little or no compensation to make way for tourism developments. Forced labour, including child labour, was used to build tourism infrastructure in order to increase Burma’s appeal to foreign investors and tourists. In 1998, the United Nations International Labour Organisation accused the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) of a ‘crime against humanity’ for its systematic use of forced labour.

• Targeted trade sanctions against the military regime in Burma were first introduced by the European Union in 2000 as part of international efforts to press for meaningful democratic reforms within the country. The most recent of these, Council Regulation (EC) 194/2008 (amended in Regulation 385/2008) was introduced in February 2008 following the violent crackdown of peaceful demonstrators in Burma in September 2007.

• Twenty-three tour operators registered in and/or operating from of the UK currently run trips to Burma. Although the majority of tourists visiting Burma are from Asia, the American and European markets reportedly represent up to 70 percent of tourism profits. The regime’s figures for 2005 showed Europe as constituting over 27 percent of the market share. France and Germany topped the list, followed by the UK.

• The regime continues to view tourism as a lucrative economic sector for expansion and development, particularly in terms of generating foreign direct investment and currency exchange. Taxes and income accrued from foreign investment and the development of infrastructure, as well as visa fees, airport duties and currency exchange – all unavoidable outlays for international tourists, provide vital financial support to the regime.

• According to the Burmese regime’s own figures, Burma earned US$182 million from tourism in 2007, up from US$164 million in 2006. It is unclear how much of this goes to the state authorities, but a former tourism minister put the figure at 12%. In fact, the real figure could be considerably higher, due to, for example, revenue accrued through additional taxes, corruption, and other economic links that the regime and its associates may have with the tourism industry.