Complicity of corporations in contemporary genocide

• In Event: Euroc - State and State-Corporate Crime

Abstract

This paper explores the complicity of corporations in contemporary genocides through the lens of state and state-corporate crime theory, focusing on case studies in Israel, China, and Myanmar. In Israel, technology and defence corporations working with the state support and profit from the militarisation of the Palestinian territories and contribute to genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. In China, state and foreign corporations are involved in the genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. And in Burma/Myanmar, extractive industries have been complicit in the persecution of the Rohingya population by providing financial and logistical support to the military junta responsible for genocide. By applying Kramer and Michalowski’s (1993) integrated theoretical model of state-corporate crime and Tombs and Whyte’s (2015) concept of state-corporate symbiosis, this paper seeks to elucidate and critically assess the ways in which corporations facilitate genocide and sustain systemic violence.

Author

• Thomas MacManus, Queen Mary University of London