I never like travel books. Who wants to read the egotistical ramblings of somebody else's holiday? But this week, I read one I couldn't put down. It made me cry.
Under The Dragon: Travels In A Betrayed Land, by Rory Maclean, is about Burma. But woven into the account of a British couple's holiday, and their bizarre search for an ancient Burmese basket, is the tragic story of a country in a nightmare.
Maclean tells of a people struggling for survival and democracy, yet held at gunpoint by one of the world's most despotic regimes. The stories are real, although some are based on a combination of characters. You meet Ni Ni, a fragile 14-year-old girl who is one of the thousands of Burmese forced to build the country's tourism infra- structure. She works on a hotel building site. You meet the drunken Mafia who profit from the new trade in tourism and the long-time trade in drugs. And you learn about the bravery of the millions of ordinary Burmese. In a country where the junta - the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), now renamed the State Peace and Development Council - imprisons people in horrific conditions for crimes such as talking to foreigners, fear and bravery are an everyday part of life.
Maclean is one of the many writers who have listened to human rights campaigning groups, such as Burma Action Group and Human Rights Watch Asia, and taken a stand. Whether to go to Burma has become a travel dilemma. Lonely Planet says go, but with the full knowledge of the situation and spend as little in government facilities as possible. Rough Guide and Burma Action Group says don't go - private tourism businesses have to pay the junta to be allowed to operate, and even the most well-meaning travellers still support the regime through visas and tourist-site entrance fees, as well as using roads built with forced labour.
The crucial point is what the democratically-elected government thinks. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 82 per cent of the seats in the 1990 elections but has never been allowed to govern, has asked people not to go. When Maclean met the Lady, as she is known by the Burmese, she told him: 'I hope you can come back to this country one day and see the people when they are not frightened. Burma will be here for many years, so tell your friends to visit us later. Visiting now is tantamount to condoning SLORC.'
When film-maker John Pilger met her, she said the same. When a friend of mine asked a group of young Burmese what tourism meant, they answered: 'More guns for the junta.' As the junta spends over half its budget on arms, even though it has no external enemies, its uses of tourism's foreign exchange are plain.
What right have we to disagree? If a country has legislation to prevent us travelling in areas of ecological fragility (parts of Antarctica) or to stop us spitting chewing gum on the pavement (Singapore), we abide by those decisions. Why do we feel we have the right to oppose the wishes of the legitimate Burmese Government?
Today is the 10th anniversary of the eighth day of the eighth month, 1988 - the day the junta massacred thousands of Burmese in Rangoon. More died then than were killed at Tienanmen Square the following year. The memory of that day, the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi has given an ultimatum to the junta (that, by August 21, the elected Parliament of 1990 should be convened), plus increasing poverty, has sent the tension within Burma to new heights.
Today, in London, Paris and Amsterdam, there will be re-enactments of the 1988 massacre, with fake soldiers, guns and blood. If there is another uprising in Rangoon, as many fear, vigils will be held instead.
Such demonstrations may seem dramatic, but governments, including our own, have offered sympathetic words and little else. Our own government baulks at imposing sanctions, the latest ground being that the situation is not 'severe enough'.
Burma is rated as one of the world's least developed countries, having once been one of the richest. Women and children suffer daily at the hands of the military. Around 200 NLD MPs have fled the country, been imprisoned or forced to resign. It is difficult to imagine what 'severe enough' might mean.
Most of our MPs are now in their holiday getaway villas. Let's hope that they have time to read a good travel book.
Burma Action Group, tel: 0171 359 7679. Under The Dragon, by Rory Maclean, is published by HarperCollins, £16.99
