ABSTRACT
Green explores the nature, limits, and possibilities of a post-genocide Myanmar. It is Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority that now globally defines Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and the character of human rights in the country. The public imagination in Myanmar is at present deeply fractured and tainted with bigotry, exclusion, and fear. Even for the most progressive and previously oppressed sections of that society, the prospect of a truly multi-cultural, democratic Myanmar is one in which the Rohingya are absent. If state crime is defined as “human rights violations perpetrated by state agents in pursuit of organizational goals” then a social audience is required to name, expose, and challenge those crimes. When repression against the Rohingya intensified in the isolated Northern Rakhine State (NRS), Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy government blamed the Rohingya for their own persecution, dismissing UN allegations as unfounded. The genocide is known because of the critical work of organized Rohingya, international activists, civil society organizations, academic research, and investigative journalism. Green asserts that Myanmar’s civil society, and its capacity to publicly imagine a free, equal and peaceful future, will remain stifled until it acknowledges the state’s genocide against the Rohingya.
