At the time of writing this review, eighteen months have passed since General Min Aung Hlaing's coup d’état of the Myanmar government. In the interim, there has been a subsequent and massive civil disobedience movement and later mobilization of People's Defense Forces to counter the military coup, as well as large-scale detainment, torture, repression, and war. The brutal crackdown and ongoing battles present the largest swath of violence through the country's heartland since the years surrounding the Second World War. All the while, serious issues of violence and displacement continue to rage in areas of the country's periphery in one of the longest-running internal conflicts in modern history; these horrors are exacerbated by the ravages of the recent series of crises.
The driving questions in Ken MacLean's book Crimes in Archival Form are ones that we should always ask, not just in scholarly research or political advocacy in this ongoing...
