The third chapter in this collection deals with two different forms of genocide. In the first study, attention is centred upon the genocide inflicted upon Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar State. The Rohingya, a Stateless ethnic group, have been subject to a plethora of State-endorsed rapes, torture, murders/killings, confiscation and destruction of property, physical abuse, religious persecution and forced labour. Because of these continuing atrocities conducted by the State, the case study here demonstrates how the country has managed to continue its conduct without facing any significant repercussions. Indeed, Myanmar has failed to conform to many of its international human rights law obligations and has chosen not to sign up for treaties it does not support. Significantly, many claimed that Myanmar and its security forces have committed ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity, which means it has broken the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that it is party to. However, it is revealed that Myanmar is yet to be criminally punished for such atrocities.

By contrast, the study looks at a form of genocide which is not as obvious but genocide all the same. With this in mind, the second half of the chapter explores the intersection of health and State crimes in the United States. Consequently, this project looks at sterilisation abuses from the American State (via individual State policies) that were inflicted upon the lives of women of colour from low socio-economic backgrounds. The case study then moves on to expose criminology for its failure to distance itself from the criminal justice discourse. Therefore, a social harm-based approach is provided to give a discursive space that seeks to outline preventable gendered and racialised harms as experienced by marginalised women. As will become apparent, the concept of social harm thus allows the piece to promote an understanding of the motives (i.e. the perpetuation of ‘whiteness’) behind multiple perpetrators within a neoliberal State.

For the discerning, the obvious connection between these two cases is the presence of genocidal racism. Despite being in different times and places (internationally and temporally), they both share similarities in terms of deception and lies relating to the events that were/are about to happen to the targeted victims.