958 K. MULAJ creating the space wherein the law retains itself in relation to exteriority. The ordering of space requires exclusion and violence which entail consumption, and involuntary movement of human bodies, as well as a special inscription of power, which hierarchise the privileged space in relation to the excluded one(s). In the sovereign ban, there is a circular relation between law and violence in the sense that law enables violence, and violence contributes to law’s constitution. The sovereign ban can be thought of as a sphere of the sovereign decision inhabited by sovereign violence wherein violence and law are intermingled. Captured in the sovereign ban is a human victim whom Agamben references via the ancient Roman figure of homo sacer (Agamben 1998, 83). This human victim represents the category of the ostracised from the political community in the waves of genocide and ethnic cleansing, past and present. Let us contextualise some dynamics of sovereign exclusion and subsequent effects in the setting of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar – with particular reference to discriminatory legislation and various chauvinist state policies. As can be inferred from the previous section, successive Burmese regimes have isolated and marginalised the Rohingya and have actively used their identity as an instrument against them (Kipgen 2016, 24). Under a seeming agenda of national unity, Myanmar governments have used a range of discriminatory policies which, framing the Rohingya as unwelcome outsiders who threaten the state and the dominant Buddhist identity, have sought to actively undermine the Rohingya’s existence in the country. They are subjected to systematic exclusion from employment in state institutions – including police, army and judiciary; they experience restrictions on practising their religion and their civil rights; and they are subjected to compulsory birth control (Council on Foreign Relations 2020). Rohingya have been subjected also to state confiscation of their land, justified by a succession of legal provisions – namely the 1953 Land Nationalisation Act, the 1974 Constitution (Art. 18 and 19), and the 2008 Constitution (Art. 37) – and subsequently enforced internal resettlement (Irish Centre for Human Rights 2010, 89–90; Zarni and Cowley 2014, 706, 708). Moreover, the Rohingya face denial of access to health care and education, significant restrictions on freedom of movement, removal from family lists as a means of depriving them of any right to residence, forceful expulsion from Myanmar, and denial of return, as a result of which their physical and mental health has been deteriorating rapidly (Fortify Rights 2014, 2020; Human Rights Watch 2022; International Crisis Group 2023). In the mechanisms of exclusion, law plays a significant role. The contribution of law in this regard can be understood in the context of biopolitical praxis – that is, the assumption that the law operates within a biopolitical framework in which life and politics become one. Carl Schmitt (1976, 27) argued that the constitution of the political community takes place outside the law because in his view there is no law which can tell one who one’s friend or enemy is. Yet Schmitt’s claim that the question of friend and enemy – on which the formation of the political community is grounded – arises outside the law, is a contentious one. Indeed, it is not borne out by the reality of the case considered here, as the poignant example of the citizenship law attests – criteria of which are entirely state-determined. In Myanmar, successive governments have used systematically discriminatory legislation that has led to the repudiation of citizenship as a tool to justify discrimination, maltreatment and exclusion – including forced displacement – of the Rohingya (Irish Centre for Human Rights 2010, 93–94). If citizenship ensures legal status, protection of rights, engagement in political activities, and enhancement of identity (Bosniak 2008), then deprivation of citizenship denies all of the above. The key legislation that deprives the Rohingya of citizenship is