Myanmar rescinds VoA
BANGKOK, 24 August 2010 – BARELY four months after introducting a visa on arrival scheme, Myanmar will mothball the service 1 September, until after the 7 November elections.
The country’s military junta is tightening security in preparation for national elections the first in the country for 20 years.
Cancellation of the visa-on-arrival will hit the country’s tourism in the run up to the peak season that gets underway November when the southwest monsoon end.
Already European tour operators are concerned that bookings for November and possibly December will decline due to “election jitters.”
For the first seven months of the year, tourism official quote a 37.4% growth in arrivals, claiming the new visa-on-arrival helped to boost indivudual travellers, a sector that improved by 53.4% to reach 89,645 visits, January to July. The visa-on-arrival was introduced 1 May.
Overall, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, reported 161,322 visitors entered the country.
Thailand was the biggest source of visitors to Myanmar with 31,795 tourists in the period, followed by China’s 19,580 visitors, South Korea with 10,206, France with 7,380, Germany with 5,678 and Italy with 3,925.
Travel industry sources believe the new visa-on-arrival scheme helped draw more individual tourists to the country, whose military-run regime is considered a pariah among western democracies.
Non-government organisations that monitor the political situation in Myanmar have warned of a crackdown and a significant build up in security prior to the election.
They claim the elections are bogus and will reinstate the military leaders’ cronies, a point the US government has underlined in recent press statements.
Agencies campaigning for democracy, however, warn travellers that they should try to ensure that dollars spent in the country do not end up in the coffers of the military junta.
A reliable source in one of the agencies told TTR Weekly that there are no sanctions or objections to tourists visiting the country.
“In a way visiting the country can provide an insight and some travellers return home to support the campaign for democracy once they have seen for themselves the gross injustices in Burmese society.”
However, agencies suggest travellers should be savvy and try to avoid companies and hotels that are owned by the junta.
They admit it is hard as nearly all the tour operators in Myanmar are joint ventures and their partners by neccesity have to report and support the military regime to stay in business.
The same goes for hotels and, im most cases, the airlines registered in Myanmar are on official sanction lists due to their links with the junta.
“The only way is to to exchange cash on the black market and buy the absolute minimum Foreign Currency Certificates that are a mechanism to ensure tourists dollars end up in the junta’s bank accounts.”
The US government’s drive to enforce sanctions on Burma gained media attention, 16 Auguts, when Barclays Bank agreed to pay a US$298 million fine to settle criminal charges that it broke US economic sanctions.
The London-based bank brokered a settlement with US prosecutors to pay US$149 million to the US government and a separate US$149 million in a deferred prosecution agreement with the New York district attorney.
The bank was accused of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act by dealing with Burma Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan.
The total sum of its financial dealings with the banned countries was US$500 million between 1995 and 2006, according to US court documents.
“To hide these illegal transactions, Barclays altered and routed payment messages” to ensure they could clear its branch in New York and other US banks, prosecutors said.
The US government is tighening sanctions on Myanmar and enforcing financial authorisation rules in an attempt to cut off commercial transfer of US dollars to the country irregardless of the nationality of the trading partners.
According to the rules companies or agencies transfering US dollars to Myanmar without prior permission from the US Treasury Department could face prosecution.
The task of cutting of the flow of dollars to a sanctioned regime falls to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which “enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals, as well as implements sanctions against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
It is understood that in the tourism arena, the USAID’s funded project www southeastasia.org, a commercial website that allows consumers to buy travel products in any of the ASEAN nations including Mynamar, could be challenged for an alleged failure to gain a OFAC permit for US dollar transactions made through its booking engine and destined for Myanmar.
A decision on the future of the Southeast Asia: Feel the Warmth project and its funding through to 2013 are under review in Washington, based on concerns that it has commercial component that benefits a country under sanctions.
