The Burma Campaign UK is calling for a boycott of all Lonely Planet (LP) publications until Lonely Planet withdraws its Burma guide from the market.

The Burma Campaign say that the development of hotels, transport and tourist attractions to encourage visitors to Burma is directly linked to mass human rights abuses. There are well-documented mass human rights abuses directly linked to the development of tourist infrastructure and the tourism industry. The United Nation's International Labour Organisation reports that “the military treat the civilian population as an unlimited pool of unpaid forced labourers and servants at their disposal. The practice of forced labour is to encourage private investment in infrastructure development, public sector works and tourism projects.”

Independent tourists are required to exchange $200 when entering the country, while many hotels, domestic airlines and other 'dollar only' retail outlets are fully or jointly owned by the regime or its associates – so local people see none of this money. Tourism currently benefits only a tiny percentage of Burma's 48 million people. Eighty per cent live in rural areas and do not in the main benefit from current forms of tourism.

Millions of men, women and children are forced to labour, under the harshest conditions, on infrastructure projects across Burma each year. Many thousands more have been forced from their homes to make way for tourism developments or as part of so-called 'beautification' projects.

Added to this, tourist dollars go straight into the hands of the dictatorship. For these reasons Aung San Suu Kyi, the British Government and the European Union have asked tourists not to visit Burma. Against the weight of this advice, Lonely Planet publications continue to promote tourism to Burma through their Burma guide.

Rough Guides has already adopted an ethical stance with regard to Burma. They say: “There are occasional instances where any benefits (from tourism) are overshadowed by the nature of the social and political climate. Apartheid South Africa was an example. Burma, with its brutal dictatorship, state control of the economy and forced labour used to build its tourist infrastructure, is another. As long as the military regime remains in power and Aung San Suu Kyi – leader of the democratically elected National League for Democracy – requests that tourists do not visit, Rough Guides will not publish a guide to the country.”

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