Burma is not just a military dictatorship, where nearly 20,000 political prisoners are locked up, most of them tortured. It is also a “world of light, of art, of living legends, of rediscovered calm which leads to serenity”can we read on the Clio agency websitebased in Paris and specializing in cultural trips, which is organizing a stay there in January 2024. On the program: a visit to Pagan and its “10,000 pagodas” or a stroll on the Irrawaddy River.
Nearly three years after the military coup of 1er February 2021, which overthrew Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the junta, in search of foreign currency, seeks to attract tourists from around the world. For the 2022-2023 fiscal year, which ends in March, the country granted nearly 370,000 tourist visas, an increase of 187% compared to the previous year. Visitors mostly from China, Russia, India and the Middle East. A figure still far from the four million tourists welcomed each year before the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the IFTM-Top Resa show, intended for professionals in the sector and organized in Paris from October 3 to 5, tourism agencies at the Thai pavilion – there was no Burmese stand – discreetly promoted Burma. On social networks, the French federation Les Entreprises du voyage even published photos of the country, before removing them, without giving an explanation.
Need for military funding
The French non-governmental organization (NGO) Info Burmanie is concerned that this promotion of tourism “normalizes the situation in the country while legitimizing the junta”according to its coordinator, Johanna Chardonnieras, who choked while reading an article published by Le FigaroFebruary 19, entitled “When to go to Burma? Weather, climate… The best periods by region”.
In March, the NGO contacted the Council of Journalistic Ethics and Mediation (CDJM) to denounce a “a variation of the advertising propaganda that the military junta is currently deploying, with a view to from a country full of fire and blood to a tourist destination ».
The referral to the CDJM was ultimately declared unfounded and Le Figaro added a context paragraph on the 2021 coup, clarifying that any travel there was ” not recommended “. “This article is part of a long list of generic publications whose aim is simply to offer practical services, such as the best travel dates, in as many destinations as possible around the world”puts Marc Feuillée, the general director of the Le Figaro group into perspective, adding that it does not“had been ordered by no tourist office”.
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