We should look beyond elite urban internet users to grasp the reach of Southeast Asian digital governance and its chilling effects<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMargaret Jack<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t16 February, 2021\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t <\/em><\/p>\n The weaponisation of \u201cthugs\u201d, as well as \u201cfake monks\u201d, speaks of a parallel with other techniques of violence and control that have been used throughout the borderlands for decades, and that now circulate in the cities as well. Think of porterage: forcing local dwellers in conflict zones to carry out military-related duties for the Tatmadaw. Think of human minesweepers: forcing civilians to walk in front of armed units to clear potential landmines. Think of the infamous 4-cuts: carving out a rebellious formation from a population by cutting their food, intelligence and information, funding, recruitment sources. Think of forced population displacement and relocation. Or of the division of territories into white, brown, and black zones that proceed in parallel with different rules of engagement and ethnic characterisations of space. Think of the formation of community defence militias<\/a> via arming and training borderland village populations.<\/p>\n These techniques of violence and control have revolved in part around the idea of making an environment inhospitable and unliveable: reconfiguring the political ecology of a place and making social formations \u201cemerge\u201d from their environments so that they can be identified, defined, and managed.<\/p>\n They function on the reproduction of identities as well as on marginalisation. In the borderlands it has historically been the \u201cethnic\u201d body that is reproduced, discriminated and marginalised via techniques of violence and control. Similarly, via the weaponisation of \u201cthugs\u201d the military regime reproduces ideas of deviance in order to divide and control the population.<\/p>\n The \u201cthugs\u201d are not only weaponised as an instrument to deliver violence and\u00a0 control, but they become also a \u201cfield\u201d of discourses and practices in which different forms of discrimination and marginalisation are reproduced. The violence the military regime brings to the streets is also a matter of diffused micro-practices of violence and control that articulate marginalised communities and labels for human beings: “thugs”, “poor”, “ethnic minority\u201d, “drug addicts”.<\/p>\n The post Soup not coup, but what boils in the coup\u2019s soup?<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on New Mandala<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elements of the weaponry and violence deployed are not only related to systems and structures but also to the reproduction of logics and techniques of control.<\/p>\n The post Soup not coup, but what boils in the coup\u2019s soup?<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14851,1589,11188],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89091,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89090\/revisions\/89091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}