Word: burma
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This week’s expedition to Burma, hosted by the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH), stands as a symbol of Harvard’s complacency and ignorance in response to the numerous and excessive human rights abuses of the Burmese military dictatorship, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC...
...government of Burma—which arbitrarily renamed the country Myanmar in 1989—has long been considered a human rights pariah within the international community. Burma seized the world’s attention in 1988 when the dictatorship massacred thousands of peaceful protesters demonstrating for democracy. In a further display of contempt for democratic ideals, the SPDC held free elections in 1990, naively believing that it would win. When the opposition won all but 10 out of 485 seats in the People’s Assembly, however, the SPDC imprisoned or killed members and supporters of the democratically...
...construction projects or as porters for the army. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Shan Women’s Action Network have revealed that the SPDC uses systematic rape as a weapon of war against insurgent ethnic minority groups. The SPDC continues its dictatorial hold over Burma, denying recognition of the results of the 1990 elections and refusing to hold any elections since...
...HMNH has shown itself to be complicit in this situation, especially since tourism almost exclusively benefits the SPDC and impedes progress towards democracy and human rights in Burma. Most of the products sold in Burma are produced by industries tied to the SPDC, and their purchase directly finances the government’s human rights abuses, because the SPDC uses much of its hard currency to purchase arms. As a tourist in Burma, it is impossible to avoid financing the corrupt, fiscally-strapped military regime. The entry certificates paid by the 500,000 visitors to Burma each year supply...
...reports, such as one by the U.N. in 1995 and another by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1998, have demonstrated that foreign tourism leads to increases in forced labor, which is used for construction around historical sites that host tourists. For these reasons, the democratically-elected government of Burma has expressed that it does not support tourism...