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Getting Away with Murder in Myanmar

Sat, April 2, 3:00 to 5:00pm, Washington State Convention Center, Floor: 2nd Floor, Room 214

Abstract

As political conditions in Myanmar, or Burma, have changed in the last five years, state agents have used egregious violence less often to quell protestors and contenders for power. Nevertheless, soldiers and police still get away with murder. Increasingly vociferous public demands for justice notwithstanding, civilians find it impossible to hold state officers who kill—whether in the line of duty or otherwise—to account. Complaints are heard, yet the demands for justice fall on deaf ears.

By bringing the literature on everyday politics into dialogue with work on accountability for state violence, in this paper I aim to enrich discussion on possible solutions to the problem of impunity in Southeast Asia by tracking the attempts of people in Myanmar to obtain redress after soldiers and police officers kill. Through close study of Burmese-language case records, human rights defenders’ documentation and print media reports, as well as interviews with the relatives of victims, lawyers and activists, I explain how and why state institutions adopt modes for the reproduction of impunity through internal procedures for investigation and punishment of wrongdoing, and with what larger political effects.

I conclude that the problem of impunity in Southeast Asia is contingent on its myriad everyday forms. Models for transitional justice, truth and reconciliation commissions, or amnesties for past offences are of small merit unless accompanied by meaningful debate about the political obstacles to holding soldiers and police to account for persistent, routinized criminality.

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