I was horrified to read your travel report promoting tourism in Burma (The Argus, April 7).

According to Ethical Consumer, "Burma is ruled by one of the world's most brutal regimes and has used forced labour (including children) to prepare the country for tourism."

Feature writer Victoria Mitchell skimmed over these facts as if they were unimportant and failed to make the link between the forced/ child labour and tourism. Tourism helps fund the regime responsible for "Torture, summary and arbitrary executions, abuse of women, politically motivated arrests and detention" and give it legitimacy.

Profits from tourism rarely reach ordinary people, some of whose homes have been bulldozed to make way for it.

The article's headline ironically referred to "hidden Burma" yet all it talked about was the facade.

Amnesty International has done numerous studies and they conclude Burma is a "prison without bars".

Victoria Mitchell mentions the military dictatorship "refuses to tolerate opposition" but she doesn't write of the extent of this.

She failed to note Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

She is the democratically elected leader of Burma whose party won 82 per cent of the seats in elections held in 1990 and she has been under house arrest for more than 11 years by the military dictatorship.

She says: "I call on governments to enact sanctions against the oppressors of my people in the name of democracy and decency."

I too urge your readers to please boycott Burma. I would also encourage them to read the Inside Burma section of John Pilger's book Hidden Agendas and to check out www.burmacampaign.org.uk.

  • Ryan Bridgewater, Henfield