Despite being under a military dictatorship, where almost 20,000 political prisoners are locked up, most of them tortured, Myanmar is also a "world of light, art, living legends and a new-found serenity," according to the website of Paris-based cultural travel agency Clio. This agency is organizing a trip there in January 2024 including on the itinerary a visit to Pagan and its "10,000 pagodas" and a trip on the Irrawaddy River.

Almost three years after the military coup of February 1, 2021, which overthrew Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the junta is attempting to attract tourists from around the world as part of its quest to bring in foreign currency. In the 2022-2023 tax year that ended in March, the country gave out almost 370,000 tourist visas, up 187% on the previous year. Most of these visitors came from China, Russia, India and the Middle East. This figure is still a far cry from the four million tourists welcomed each year before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

At the IFTM-Top Resa trade show held in Paris at the start of October, tourism agencies at the Thai pavilion – there was no Myanmar stand –discreetly promoted Myanmar. The French federation Les Entreprises du voyage even published photos of the country on social media, before taking them down without any explanation.

The French NGO Info Birmanie was concerned that this promotion of tourism "normalizes the situation in the country while legitimizing the junta," according to its coordinator, Johanna Chardonnieras, who was must upset at an article published by Le Figaro on February 19 entitled "When's a good time to go to Myanmar in terms of weather and climate...? The best times to go for each region."

In March, the NGO lodged a complaint with the French journalistic council for ethics and mediation [Conseil de déontologie journalistique et de médiation], denouncing the "range of advertising propaganda currently deployed by the military junta with a view to making a tourist destination out of a country in chaos." The complaint was eventually declared unfounded, and Le Figaro added a paragraph of context on the 2021 coup d'état, specifying that any travel there was "not recommended." "This article is one of a long list of generic publications aiming simply to offer practical advice, such as the best dates for vacations in as many destinations around the world as possible," explained Marc Feuillée, General Manager of the Le Figaro Group, adding that the article "was not commissioned by any tourist office."

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