Tourism in South Asia
Who profits, who pays?
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
The U.S. media admit that Secretary of
State Colin Powell's visit to Thailand is designed to prop up the hard-hit
tourist industry there. The catastrophic Dec. 26 tsunami hit the beaches of Sri
Lanka and Thailand and the islands of the Maldives at the height of tourist
season.
While the tourist industry brings a lot of money into these
countries, it doesn't enrich the workers and farmers. Instead it aggravates
class divisions and makes the capitalists there even more appen dages of foreign
capital.
In covering the tragedy, U.S. news media highlighted the dramatic
stories and deaths of Australian, European, and U.S. tourists in the area. Of
the six New York Post photo cover stories on the tragedy, three featured white
tourists.
In the days immediately following the tsunami, a top priority of
the authorities was to evacuate the surviving tourists.
The heaviest
losses, however, were not in tourist areas but in the coastal villages of
Indonesia, which were devastated by the earthquake as well as the
tsunami.
United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland asserted,
"We will never, ever have the absolute, definite figure because there are many
nameless fishermen and villages that have just gone." (The
Australian)
Also unnamed in U.S. news reports are the women and men whose
labor kept the luxurious beach-side resorts running. At Sofitel Magic Lagoon in
Khao Lak, near Phuket, Thailand, one-third of the 320 person staff were still
missing a week after the calamity. And an estimated 10,000 people have lost
their jobs in the Thai resort industry as a result of the tsunami. (Asian Labour
News)
Rooms at the Magic Lagoon cost between $350 and $600 a night. An
average monthly salary for a Thai hotel worker is about $130. More than 10
million tour ists visit Thailand in a year, 4 million in the Phuket area alone.
(beachpatong.com)
The international sex-trade industry preys on
impoverished people of the area, mostly women and children. They are marketed to
Western tourists, primarily men, as destinations for travel tours. The profits
made from this human suffering are as yet incalculable. (Julia Davidson, "Sex
Tourists in Thailand," wri-irg.org)
Tidal wave of
super-exploitation
Transnational travel industry giants like Le
Meridien, Holiday Inn and Accor make extravagant profits through the
super-exploitation of workers in these resorts.
Le Meridien, created by
Air France in 1972, subsequently merged with corporations from England and
Japan. It now has major financing from U.S.-based Lehman Brothers. Giant Accor,
which runs the Magic Lagoon, has hotels in 140 countries, including Motel 6 and
Red Roof Inns in the United States.
Joining these worldwide corporations
in the rush to wring profit from Asian workers is the World Bank, through its
affiliate, the International Finance Corp. The IFC, which finances private
corporations expanding into the developing world, has specifically targeted
tourism as an area for exploitation.
In 2002 the IFC loaned $17 million to
private companies in the Maldives to build resort areas. Before the tsunami,
tourism generated 33 percent of the Maldives' GDP, and its typically low-paying
service work made up 30 percent of local employment. (ifc.org)
In its own
words, "The IFC finances private sector investments in the developing world,
mobilizes capital in the international financial markets, helps clients improve
social and environmental sustainability, and provides technical assistance and
advice to governments and businesses."
The mission statement further
elaborates: "We are committed to working on the frontiers of private investment,
helping bring commercial disciplines and entrepreneurial dynamism to new areas
of the economy."
In plain words, the IFC, the World Bank and the
transnational corporations that are their partners are dedicated to finding any
way possible to make money off the working and oppressed people of the world,
including the people who once lived in the countryside, villages and towns now
devastated by the tsunami.
In August 2003, management at the Diamond Cliff
Resort and Spa in Phuket blasted workers with mass layoffs for attempting to
unionize, and kept them from getting jobs at other resorts. The workers, without
income and homeless, refused to settle with the company, and demanded their jobs
and reinstatement with fair wages. This is the spirit of the workers hit so hard
by the tsunami of the ocean, the spirit of their fight against the tidal wave of
capitalism.
Reprinted from the Jan. 13, 2005, issue of Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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