Anticipating the Struggle against Everyday Impunity in Myanmar through Accounts from Bangladesh and Thailand

Abstract

Work done internationally to address impunity concentrates on removing blanket amnesties and establishing commissions of inquiry into past atrocities. Everyday impunity-the impossibility of bringing state officers to account for routinized violent crimes against other individuals-gets less attention, even though its effects on public life are insidious. Studying the 2014 killing of a journalist, we identify modes for the production of everyday impunity in Myanmar that emerge from earlier periods of unmediated military rule but that today are coming to resemble practices in neighbouring countries. Accounts from Bangladesh and Thailand reveal how impunity can persist in new political conditions, producing insecurity and hampering efforts for more inclusive forms of government. We close by urging scholars to remain attentive to their responsibilities in the face of impunity, calling on them not to participate in projects that have the effect of concealing violent crime by state officers, and denying victims justice.

In the Absence of the Rule of Law: Everyday Lawyering, Dignity and Resistance in Myanmar’s ‘Disciplined Democracy’

“…They are also party to a system that has normative significance, and that is capable, nominally or formally at least, of binding power holders. However, in Myanmar the daily realities of the formal criminal justice system remain largely as they have been for decades (Cheesman et al, 2016). Because the rule of law is functionally absent, lawyers cannot play the same role as in democratic regimes.…”

“…The recent literature emphasizes how none among the Constitutional Tribunal, the Anti-Corruption Commission or the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission are able to operate as a system of meaningful checks and balances (Nardi in Harding and Oo, 2017: 173–191; Quah, 2016; Renshaw, 2017: 215–234; Saw, 2015). Widespread impunity reigns at every level for crimes committed by state and military officials, whether these abuses are events of international significance (such as the violent expulsion of more than 600,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State (Amnesty International, 2017; Smith, 2013; MacManus et al, 2015)) or take place at a persistent, everyday level (such as mistreatment or murder of journalists and activists: Cheesman et al, 2016) In addition to such lack of accountability for executive and military overreach, power is also exercised with insufficient clarity or predictability, through the erratic and punitive interpretation of both modern and colonial-era legislation (Dean, 2017: 501).…”