Introduction 9
were also drawn on in the conceptualisation of statelessness as ‘bare life’
by which human lives are reduced only to survival (Agamben 1998). As
noted earlier, whether the production of statelessness is approached as state
crime or not also relates to how the role of the state is understood in relation to broader persecution and violence. Increasingly, after 2017, the term
‘genocide’ was used to describe the situation for Rohingya in Rakhine State
(UNHRC Sept 2018) and attention in turn began to focus on the role of the
state ID schemes in the 2016–7 waves of genocidal violence (Fortify Rights
2019; Potter and Kyaw Win 2019). As noted in Chapter 6, genocide is not
only a set of discreet events of mass killing and other acts of genocide but
also a sociological process. ‘Reorganisation genocides’ involve the destruction of some identities—such as national and ethnic—and the imposition of
new exclusive identities (Lemkin 1944; Feierstein 2014). Genocide scholar,
Feierstein (2015:115–127), describes the terror of genocide as a ‘technology
for transforming, reorganising and destroying identities.’ The production of
statelessness within genocide can also be understood as a technology for destroying and imposing identities. Approaching statelessness as part of a reorganisation genocide can disrupt the logic behind international approaches to
tackling Rohingya statelessness in the ways they seek to engage with the state
to reduce statelessness. Genocide featured frequently in Rohingya narratives,
as did state intent to destroy their group identity through the production of
their statelessness. Thus, a key focus of this research was to examine how
Rohingya experienced and described the intersections between identity destruction, statelessness, and genocide.
State crime and resistance
Human rights reports on crimes against humanity and genocide, and international advocacy approaches are in part influenced by Rohingyas’ own
framings of citizenship deprivation, their activism, and their resistance to
state and international actions in regard to citizenship deprivation. This,
then, ties into the ways in which state crime scholarship approaches resistance and social audience (Green and Ward 2019). Whilst some scholarship
remains focused on criteria-based definitions of what constitutes state crime,
such as international law and human rights, other scholarship understands
that deviant states and supra-state organisations are unlikely to criminalise
their own acts and contends that criminality is social construct (Green and
Ward 2004; Lasslett, Green et al. 2015:2). These scholars look to communities of resistance to censure and sanction states where they deviate from these
norms (Green and Ward 2012; Lasslett 2012). So a breach of these norms
‘does not in itself inscribe state practices with the quality of being criminal,
rather it is the struggles that emerge in response to these deviant acts which
stigmatise state practices and the regimes that author them as being wrong’
(Lasslett, Green et al. 2015:5). So the role of resistance is important in naming and understanding the crimes of states (Green and Ward 2012; Lasslett