HUMAN RIGHTS-BURMA: Tourist Industry Built by Forced Labour

LONDON, Dic 17 (IPS) - Prisoners in manacles and leg chains are being used to clear and restore ancient sites in Burma in anticipation of an influx of 500,000 tourists during its Year of the Tourist in 1996, according to Burma observers in London.

Tourists will gasp in awe at the intricate embellishments on the spires and turrets of Mandalay's ancient palace; wonder at the massive pagoda smothered in gold leaf at Rangoon's Shwedagon Temple, and explore the lanes and temples of the ancient town of Pagan, looming out of the dry plain on which it sits.

But they will not know the stories of hardship and displacement that lie behind their refurbished facades.

Nor will they be told that the roads they travel on and the hotels they sleep in were built by forced labour, using common criminals, political prisoners, and civilians alike, according to Burma specialist Martin Smith.

"To cope with the expected rise in tourists from only 30,000 last year, the government is having to undergo a vast expansion of the country's infrastructure. It doesn't have money, so it conscripts people to do the work," he charges.

The palace of Mandalay, once the ancient seat of the Burmese rulers before the British invasion of the 1880s, is being cleared of the rubble of the ages and restored according to its original plans.

Its massive red brick walls and moat have this year been encircled by a new dual carriageway. It was constructed using a mix of prisoners and civilians, whose lives would have been turned upside down during the five-month project.

The conscription of civilians into forced labour is widespread in a variety of work, including the construction of roads, airfields, army barracks and railway lines in government controlled areas, according to the London-based human rights watchdog Anti-Slavery International (ASI).

And in the government's armed conflicts with ethnic minorities such as the Karen tribes people, civilians are frequently used as look outs and porters carrying arms into dangerous front-line positions, it claims.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service