Surveillance and genocide
Another wee essay I wrote for uni. This is from my criminology module and discusses genocide at the end.
Critical evaluation the role of the state in preventing and/ producing harm
This essay will critically evaluate the role of the state in producing harm as well as preventing harm. To better understand this question the concept of the state needs to be defined so that its role in producing and preventing harm can be better understood. Once this has been done then the essay will look at how surveillance methods employed by the state can lead to harm. Surveillance is usually sold as a way to protect citizens from terror attacks or other perceived dangers and in certain cases this may be true. However these powers of surveillance often go too far and can be used as a way to separate people that the state deems unworthy. This leads to the next example which is genocide and more specifically the genocide of the Rohingya people of Myanmar. Genocide is widely considered the most extreme crime a state can commit but that can depend on the framing as well as the discourse used to commit said crime.
The state does not have a simple definition but there are a few key components that most if not all states have. According to UK criminologists Roy Coleman and Joe Sim, states have an assemblage of organisation and institutions. States have a defined territory within which they maintain order with consent or coercion(Mooney and Tombs, 2025). There are also varying ideas of the state within itself which makes defining it so complex. These could be a pluralist theory which is linked more to a liberal democracy, an elitist state where a minority group or ‘elite classes operate in an informal way to gain more economic or political capital and finally a Marxist theory which serves the economic class which would include all citizens as it does not favour an elite ruling class(Mooney and Tombs, 2025). All these theories jostle for dominance continuously within the state. The state maintains its control through the use of physical force which it claims to have a monopoly on. This according to Max Weber is its defining feature(Mooney and Tombs, 2025). It does this as a way to protect its citizens as well as maintain control over its borders which are often contested by neighbouring states or in some cases from internal actors seeking autonomy(Mooney and Tombs, 2025). The way the state is able to do this is through hegemony, a concept first introduced by Antonio Gramsci. Hegemony is the state’s way of securing consent for its actions and it uses media, literature, cultural ideas as well as legal and economic force to sway people to accept its rule(Mooney and Tombs, 2025). None of this is to say the state is a exclusively harmful. It still needs to provide for the citizens as they need to believe in it. So the state does in some cases provide or facilitate health services, educational institutions, transport infrastructure and emergency services.
Surveillance often goes unnoticed by people because over time it has become the norm within our society. It is also framed by the state as a way to keep people safe from crime an example of which would be CCTV in cities(Willis, 2025). London is one of the most surveilled cities in Europe followed only by Berlin(Willis, 2025). After the September 11 attacks on the USA governments used the discourse of preventing further terror attacks to further improve and increase their need for surveillance(Willis, 2025). However this comes with a price as we don’t know who is watching us and what they are doing with the data they collect. An example of this would be how the private company Argent implemented facial recognition technology at King Cross station. It claimed to be helping the metropolitan police who denied this and it also did not follow the right protocols with the government after it had collected facial scans of several private individuals without their consent(Willis, 2025). These sorts of actions can have unintended consequences when the technology may sometimes have false positives occur and people can be wrongfully arrested. This has happened in the USA and some 3600 American citizens have been wrongfully detained due to ‘faulty information database screening protocols’(Willis, 2025).This is a small infringement compared to how other states may use this technology to undermine the privacy of its population. Governments and private corporations can work together to use surveillance technology to hinder free speech and privacy of their opponents(Bernot, 2021). This is used as a way to consolidate power and push the state to a more authoritarian form of governance all under the guise of state security(Bernot, 2021). This also allows for the state and corporation to profit from their surveillance as well as export it to foreign countries who would also use it to abuse their power. A example of this is China who have been dealing in surveillance technology for several decades(Bernot, 2021). China dominates the top 10 list of most surveilled cities with only London and Atlanta on the list(Willis, 2025). This gives an idea of the level of control the state has over its citizens. China claims not to involve itself in national affairs of its trading partners but it does sell them surveillance technologies which can influence the political outcomes of a country. There is evidence to show that 36% of Chinas foreign infrastructure investments are with authoritarian states which raises concerns with the influence China has over these countries and who it chooses to support(Bernot, 2021). This is not to say all surveillance is negative even though there is more evidence in favour of that. Returning to CCTV as crime prevention. When looked at from the perspective of Jeremy Benthems concept of the panopticon. An idea where convicts are placed in a prison where they are always able to be seen and therefore adapt their behaviour accordingly(Willis, 2025). This is also known as the panoptic gaze which in our modern day is not the only sort there is. The synoptic gaze is the opposite of the panoptic gaze. This is where the many watch the few or in our case the people watch the ruling class(Willis, 2025). This is done with modern media such as social media and live broadcasting here we can see that the state is also open to being surveilled and therefore also needs to adapt its behaviours for the good of the people(Willis, 2025). One example of the public using this to expose the crimes of the state is that on the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar which will be discussed next.
When it comes to harms produced by the state then genocide is by far the most serious. This involves systematically destroying an ethnic, racial, national or religious group of people with the end result often being death(Green, 2025). The roots of the genocide in Myanmar reach back to the decolonization of the country in 1947. The British had brought in Indians to work for them and this caused tensions between the Indians and the Burmese Buddhists as the Indian population had more capital and were a minority group in the state. This can be seen as the start of tense relations between Burmese Buddhists and other ethnic minority groups. The British also implemented indirect rule over minority border regions which the Buddhists saw as undermining their culture and religion(Anwari, 2020). This is another issue that would lead to crimes committed by the state at a later point. This struggle for autonomy by the Rohingya against the governments and military leadership has continued for decades. Slowly over time the various governing forces created a discourse of the Rohingya people not being a part of the national identity. Reducing their ability to vote and become citizens of the state(Anwari, 2020). These measures led to violent groups forming within the Rohingya community which further fuelled the discourse of the government about the need to rid the country of the Rohingya. Once the military junta took over the country, they implemented more policies to further remove Rohingya from the national identity by asking for proof of their heritage to the country from before the country gained independence(Anwari, 2020). In 1951 the government implemented a white card system as a way to control how many Rohingya could stay in the country and as a way to gain their votes as having a white card allowed voting rights(Anwari, 2020). This can also be seen as a form of surveillance where the government can monitor and track where white card holders live and work. Over the years the control over the Rohingya became more complete and more acts of violence were committed against them(Green, 2025). These are all steps in the process of committing a genocide namely stigmatisation, harassment, isolation, systemic weakening and finally killing(Green, 2025). By the final phase which took place between 2014-2017 the Rohingya weren’t allowed to identify by that name and were being forced out of the state. The state had manufactured a discourse for the rest of the population that it was protecting the purity of their culture as well as protecting them from a common enemy. Buddhist held positions of power within the state and were seen as moral leaders. They used this as a way to justify the crimes committed against Rohingya people(Green, 2025). However even within all this misinformation there were still groups who were able to observe what was happening and report it to the international community. Photography and investigative journalism that exposed the government to the international community allowed for action to be taken(Green, 2025). The government claimed to be solving an issue that had long been plaguing the nation and all this was done for the benefit of the state’s goal of unifying the Burmese Buddhist society(Green, 2025).
This essay has discussed surveillance and genocide which may appear two very separate concepts but are in actual fact highly connected. The use of surveillance by the state is sold to the people as one of protection and safeguarding but in actual fact it is a way for the state to control people and in doing so produce harm towards the very people it says it is protecting. While surveillance may have a few positive effects on crime prevention, as a whole it erodes the privacy of people and over time as people get used to the surveillance methods employed by the state. This if left unchecked leads to further harms caused by the state and in the wrong hands can lead to serious crimes. Genocide is the most serious crime a state can commit and the process from start to finish is a long one. It often requires surveillance of the perceived other and total control over the discourse of that “out group”. The state will claim to be protecting the people from the harms this group may be causing but in reality, it is the state that is producing harm on the greatest scale.
Words:1824
References:
Mooney, G.,Tombs, S. (2025) ‘Understanding states:making law, making order?’ L, Copson., E, Dimou., and S, Tombs. (eds) Crime, Harm and the State: book 2nd ed, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp 3-22
Willis, T. (2025) ‘States of surveillance’ L, Copson., E, Dimou., and S, Tombs. (eds) Crime, Harm and the State: book 2nd ed, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp 54- 76
Green, P. (2025) ‘State crime, social harm and genocide’ L, Copson., E, Dimou., and S, Tombs. (eds) Crime, Harm and the State: book 2nd ed, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp 85-102
Bernot, A. (2021) ‘Transnational state-corporate symbiosis of public security: China’s exports of surveillance technologies’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 10(2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.5204/IJCJSD.1908.
Anwary, A. (2020) ‘Interethnic Conflict and Genocide in Myanmar’, Homicide Studies, 24(1), pp. 85–102. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767919827354.