2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) bilateral wars27 and in discriminating and persecuting minorities.28 I define it as the misuse of law by governments, democratic or authoritarian, in crushing dissent and resistance. Myanmar has been ruled by the military or military-dominated regimes from 1962 until 2011 and from February 2022 until present. Regimes headed by active or retired generals used a repertoire of existing laws and wrote new laws to target those who dissented or opposed the military as a form of repression. 29 Such laws may be said to bring about ‘material, emotional, and psychological injurious actions that target an entire group of people with a particular set of shared social characteristics’30 among revolutionaries, activists and dissidents in Myanmar. For example, enjoying impunity, a Myanmar military soldier said that ‘when protestors refuse to listen to our orders to disperse, we shoot at the protestors in accordance with the law’.31 Existing laws including, but not limited to, the Penal Code, 32 the Code of Criminal Procedure33 and the Ward or Village-Tract Administration Law34 have been amended or repealed, while laws such as the Counter-Terrorism Law have been increasingly used to punish dissidence and resistance. For example, the SAC suspended ss 5, 7, and 8 of the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens, which prohibits a police search of private homes without two witnesses, prohibits the detention of anyone for more than 24 hours without a court order and requires seizure, surveillance, spying or investigating to be conducted without affecting citizens’ privacy, security and dignity.35 After the suspension of ss 5,7 and 8, an unknown number of private homes, workplaces and shops have faced raids.36 By adding new sub-sections to s 505 of the Penal Code, the SAC also criminalised 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Charles J Dunlap Jr, ‘Lawfare Today: A Perspective’ (2008) 3(1) Yale Journal of International Affairs 146, 146 quoted in Orde F Kittrie, Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War (Oxford University Press 2016) 1. John L Comaroff, ‘Symposium Introduction: Colonialism, Culture, and the Law: A Foreword’ (2001) 26(2) Law & Social Inquiry 305, 305–306; Kari Telle, ‘Faith on Trial: Blasphemy and “Lawfare” in Indonesia’ (2018) 83(2) Ethnos 371, 374. Nick Cheesman, ‘Thin Rule of Law or Un-Rule of Law in Myanmar?’ (2009/2010) 82 Pacific Affairs 597, 601–604. Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy J Abrego, ‘Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants’ (2012) 117(5) American Journal of Sociology 1380, 1414. Pwint Htun, ‘Beyond the Coup in Myanmar: “In Accordance with the Law” — How the Military Perverts Rule of Law to Oppress Civilians’, Just Security (Blog Post, 28 April 2021) <https://www.justsecurity.org/75904/beyond-the-coup-in-myanmar-in-accordancewith-the-law-how-the-military-perverts-rule-of-law-to-oppress-civilians/>, archived at <https://perma.cc/K748-UCAH>. ‘State Administration Council Law No (5/2021): Law Amending the Penal Code, 14 February 2021’, Global New Light of Myanmar (Yangon, Myanmar, 15 February 2021) 2 (‘State Administration Council Law No (5/2021)’). ‘State Administration Council Law No (6/2021): Law Amending the Code of Criminal Procedure, 14 February 2021’, Global New Light of Myanmar (Yangon, Myanmar, 15 February 2021) 2. ‘State Administration Council Law No (3/2021): Fourth Amendment of the Ward or VillageTract Administration Law, 13 February 2021’, Global New Light of Myanmar (Yangon, Myanmar, 14 February 2021) 2. ‘State Administration Council Law No (4/2021): Amendment of Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of the Citizens, 13 February 2021’, Global New Light of Myanmar (Yangon, Myanmar, 14 February 2021) 1. David Pierson, ‘Myanmar’s Military Sows Fear and Terror in Nighttime Raids’, Los Angeles Times (online, 12 March 2021) <https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-0312/myanmar-nighttime-raids>, archived at <https://perma.cc/CX4L-MKCE>. The author also witnessed about a dozen such raids in Mandalay in February and March 2021. 284