Government to pressurise Burma operators
Minister to write to companies asking them to end tours to troubled country
Tour operators featuring Burma will this week be targeted by the Government, which hopes to end trips to the country because of its poor human rights record.
According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, the Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien is vowing to write to tour companies that go to Burma – largely because of the recent imprisonment of the human rights campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi – and that stronger action will follow if operators to not take action.
He reportedly said: “If we do not see a substantive improvement in Burma, the British Government will not sit idly by. It is not helpful to speculate what further action we will take but there are a number of options open to us.”
Unsurprisingly, there has been a less-than enthusiastic reception from Orient Express, which runs the Road to Mandalay cruise. A spokesman reportedly told the newspaper that the company had “no intention” of pulling out: “We directly employ 150 people in Burma and do business with around 1,000 locally. We haven’t received a letter from the minister yet but when we do we will request a meeting with him, in order to put our views across.”
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