Dark shadows behind sunny images in tourist brochures

THE flowery language and dreamy pictures of the brochures on offer at this weekend's Travel World exhibition in the RDS tell only half the story.

Third world tourism has often meant the sidelining of local communities and the tokenising of traditional values. But it is now also associated with forced resettlement, compulsory labour, sexual exploitation and propaganda campaigns by undemocratic regimes.

Burma is judged the worst offender. A land of golden pagodas, snow capped mountains, lush green paddy fields and white sand beaches, say the travel brochures. A brutal military dictatorship that gas killed thousands of its citizens as well as imprisoning the democratically elected leader, Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, say human rights activists.

The difference between Burma and other dictatorships is that its abuses are directly linked to tourism. The Burma Action Group, which has been picketing the Travel World exhibition, says two million people, including children as young as eight, have been forced Lo build roads. Millions of others have been forcibly relocated from their homes, especially poor people living in popular destinations.

"Wherever you go in the country as a tourist, you are the beneficiary of slavery," says the veteran campaigner John Pilger, whose television documentary exposed such practices as forced labour and the shackling of child workers.

But in spite of appeals by Ms Aung San Suu Kyi and others for tourists not to go there, tourism in Burma is on the up and up. Visitor numbers have jumped from 10,000 in 1992, to 100,000 in 1995 and a hoped for 500,000 last year.

Visitors to the Holiday World exhibition this weekend can choose from a variety of brochures on Burma. Take the Explore brochure, with its mouth watering descriptions of Pagan, "city of 1,000 temples... one of the most amazing sites in Southeast Asia".

What the brochure doesn't mention is that in 1990 the 5,200 people who lived in Pagan were forced to move to a bare site five miles away. Each family was paid the equivalent of £1.40 compensation.

Pilger says the argument that tourist money drips down to the general population is fatuous. "Most of it goes on imported luxuries and to the military government."

ARGUMENTS about ethical tourism extend well beyond Burma, however. In a world where only 79 countries qualified in a recent survey as "free", a reasonable case can be made for not visiting the other 180 or so.

Most of the world's most repressive regimes - such as Burundi, Libya and Saudi Arabia - aren't exactly tourist honeypots, but the list of the least free countries includes other destinations with growing popularity, such as Vietnam and China, as well as Burma.

"In Turkey, tourism is used as a smokescreen for all the dreadful things the government does to the Kurds. As for those who stay in the fabulous hotels in Bali, they might reflect that under the car parks lie the mass graves of the victims of purges carried out in the 1960s," says Pilger.

Even in countries with better human rights records, there are problems. Thailand's 200 golf courses have depleted in water supply. One course consumes enough water each day to satisfy the domestic needs of 60,000.

In Goa, the five star hotels boast fabulous swimming pools but the water supply to the locals is restricted to two hours a day. A hundred years ago, the nomadic Masai warriors evoked fear and respect in the minds of the European settlers coming to Kenya today, they peddle souvenirs along the beaches of Mombasa.

Then there are the well publicised evils of sex tourism in places such as Thailand and Philippines.

So would it be better if we stay at home? No, says Trocaire, which points out that tourism can bring many benefits to a country, provided visitors are sensitive.

"Try to read the various guidebooks, discover more about the culture and choose locally produced goods instead of global brands," says Niamh O'Carroll of Trocaire, which advises visitors to avoid unnamed "repressive regimes".

Pilger says the ethics of tourism is going to come under closer examination in the future.

"I don't see tourism as benefiting anyone substantially, except in some developed countries. People have to ask themselves whether it is right to go, say, to some impoverished Caribbean island and stay in a luxury compound which has no contact with the people living outside."