Other Agencies
The application of tourism as a lever to compel the regime to recognise the opposition and introduce political reform underlies the positions of various pressure groups and non-governmental organisations. Tourism is a focus for a number conducting more general campaigns and the staging of Visit Myanmar Year had a catalytic effect (Oo & Perez, 1996; Tourism Concern, 2002). Demands for a boycott intensified amongst human rights agencies in America, Australia and Europe alongside Burmese groups in exile and other organisations. Protestors aver that tourists ‘should not go to Burma on holiday . . . whilst SLORC continues to deny basic human rights to its people’ (Burma Action Group, 1996: 3).