Myopic
Sir: Victor Buchanan's patronising, naive and factually incorrect account of life in modern Burma (3 April) places him on the first planeload of the myopic and 'Hun- like' hoards of tourists he so despises.
No doubt with only a week in the country and in the arms of a 'neater, sweeter maiden', it is just possible to fail to see the realities of that government's self-imposed austerity (rice production at 10 per cent of pre-war levels, most internal lines of com- munications to all intents and purposes non-existent, 95 per cent of the country off limits to foreigners, Khmer Rouge style compulsion of the educated classes, especially anyone educated abroad, to take menial or manual labour, the endless and deliberately uncultivated tracts of fertile land). But to deny a people almost any con- tact with the rest of the world from some whimsical and seven-day glance through a window indicates a rather more frightening moral stance.
As for his assertion that Burma is suscep- tible to the same 'seeds of instability' that have afflicted neighbouring Indochina, even a cursory glance at its relations, both on a tribal and governmental level, with the surrounding countries of Thailand, Bangladesh, Laos and China would show that this is simply not the case.
It is all too easy, as a tourist, to fail to see beyond the facade erected by dictatorships; it is a pity that Mr Buchanan has fallen into a trap.
Nigel Q. ffooks
15 Durham Terrace, Bayswater, London W2
Previous page
