Surveillance without Borders
The Case of Karen Refugees in Sheffield
Geff Green and Eleanor Lockley, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
This chapter presents a case study of the Sheffield Karen community’s experience of surveillance and cyber conflict. It outlines how “local” conflicts can be manifested at great distances, targeting social media and phone hacking. In this case, a local conflict originated in a completely different locality. It also moved into a virtual world, one characterized by an “inverse reach,” allowing the oppressors to reach out and touch the oppressed by appropriating their channels of communication and using information gained though surveillance to attack them in specific ways that referenced aspects of the real conflict. Not only does this case provide insight into how new media is being used in cyber warfare, but it also highlights existing dynamics and divisions that are part of the real conflict. An account is provided from a participant observer’s point of view; the account also explores the background and the anatomy of one particular cyber-attack.
Keywords
Cyber-Terrorism; Case Study; Cyber Surveillance; Burma
Information in this chapter
• Virtual/material spaces of surveillance
• Borderlands and surveillance Local/Global geographies of Surveillance
Introduction
Although it is not a new phenomenon for immigrant communities to carry inter-ethnic or inter-religious disputes with them across the world, there appears to be very little literature about this phenomenon, especially in relation to the dimensions that digital communication might bring to this type of situation. This chapter provides an account of a recent skirmish that carried many of the historical characteristics of exported inter-ethnic, politico-military conflicts while also bearing new markers whose dimensions are a consequence of 21st century communication technologies. This particular incident is also marked by its relationship to past events, uneven power relationships, and a long-running political and military campaign for self-government.
We initiated a community project to work with Burmese refugees in the Sheffield area of the UK that involved the use of various aspects of social media as well as the more traditional journalistic techniques and approaches, developing media practices with the aim of developing students’ skills as community journalists. This project arose from a stated desire by certain members of the exiled Burmese community to become reporters on human rights abuses and political oppression being enacted by the Burmese regime across their country of origin. The project took place from September, 2009 to April, 2010. Some of the participants were from various Burmese ethnic minorities, while the majority of the participants were ethnic Karen, reflecting the large number of Karen refugees who had moved to the UK between 2005 and 2007 under the Gateway Protection Scheme, which works with the UNHCR. Certain members of this group of Karen became the targets of the hacking and flaming attacks that we relate below.
This chapter outlines and discusses how local conflicts can be manifested at great distance, aided by new media and its surveillance. In the case presented, we encountered a local conflict that was based in a completely different location from the place of origin. It was also characterized by confusion about the extent to which the offending and offensive communication was inter-local or locally based. How fear and trauma can be reignited far from their place of origin are also addressed. We focus on one particular case study, and in doing so, we identify the methods used, the source of terror, and the relationship between the tools of physical oppression and the evocation of them through the use of a variety of media and surveillance activities. We demonstrate how this was done through a combination of opportunism and calculated psychological oppression to hound individuals. One tool we use is a critical discourse analysis of some of the material directed at the Karen.
This critique is informed particularly in relation to knowledge of the historical and political background of the events, but also in relation to aspects of Karen identity and culture that allow what could be seen as more general discourse of threat and insult to be understood in terms of its specific significance to this community and its experiences, history, and identity. In particular, the way cultural taboos are exploited in this type of information warfare to undermine the credibility of key figures through rumor and allegation is highlighted, as well as how a message of "We are watching you despite your physical distance from us" is sent through colonizing virtual spaces used by a refugee community, establishing what we describe as “inverse reach.” It is therefore relevant to provide some literature and theory relating to these events, while the methodological issues relating to our positions as researchers (and participant observers) are also addressed.
The purpose of this case study is not to investigate or identify perpetrators but to analyze the events, the relationship between real and virtual worlds, and how online events translate into real-world actions and local consequences. This work does not seek to explore the broader questions about who is the terrorist and who is the terrorized, as this conflict cannot always be understood in terms of aggressor and victim. However, we look at one particular dimension of cyber terror and surveillance when it is used as a tool of oppression against one’s own citizens [1] and against refugees who have left their country of origin [2].
Background
This case study helps to provide insight into the mechanics of a kind of online warfare and the ways in which its impetus originates in real-world conflict and extends into real events and ramifications after taking place in a virtual space through hacking. A key background activity to this work is understanding the pre-existing ethnic sensitivities and constructions of identity alongside those expressed through online media by both sides in the conflict. Without this background, it is difficult to understand the context for trauma, the responses of the Karen community, and the discourse of the cyber-attacks themselves. The unique situation of the Karen also explains how some of the hacking took place.
Significance of Karen identity and its construction
It is important to understand a few key issues relating to the identity of the Karen without getting into a discussion about the complex range of factors that influence identity in general [3]. In this instance, ideas about identity cannot be entirely removed from psychological factors (which we discuss below), especially with regard to the importance of stories of hardship forming a certain type of badge of identity. It can be said that the Karen collective identity is not primarily a cultural, religious, or ethnic issue, but rather a political one. It has developed against a background of ethnic conflict and competition that has a long history in Burma [4], capitalized upon by the British [5], and further reified in post-colonial conflicts continuing since the establishment of the Burmese state until the present day.
A number of researchers have explored aspects of identity and its modern practices, particularly among refugees and migrants in the borderlands between Thailand and Burma, where many have fled or migrated [6–10].
There has been an on-going project to demarcate, simplify, and to some extent define a common ground among the Karen that would allow them to unite against the Burmese regime under a common flag. The work of Comaroff and Comaroff [11], undertaken in other ethnic contexts, focuses on this type of convenient and deliberate repackaging of identity for a common political or commercial purpose. In actual fact, the Karen spread from the so-called Karen territories to other regions and have several different linguistic groups and religious affiliations, ranging from brands of Christianity to Buddhism and Animism. Linguistically, the Karen dialects all supposedly belong to the same linguistic family [12], although they are sometimes “mutually unintelligible” [9]. Some no longer speak the original dialects and many live in urban areas or are migrant workers in other countries and are essentially apolitical [13]. However, the refugee camps and surrounding areas have become a focus of the work of the Karen National Union (KNU), which has included the migration of some key activists to other countries such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan. The community we were working with could largely be equated with the KNU and their activities, and the people targeted were the more active members of the community as well as participants in our training scheme.
Certain events and activities such as the Karen New Year are particularly important assertions of a form of hybrid constructed Karen identity drawing on a range of traditional practices and putting them together as a show of unity both for their own community and for the benefit of host communities and opponents. Markers of identity comprise songs, woven garments, dances, and particular annual rituals and events. Sheffield’s Karen community is largely Christian and most are Baptists, but they have been at pains to present a message of pantheistic tolerance and cooperation, although the reality of Buddhist Karen presents a contradictory challenge to those who equate the Burmese regime and the Burman ethnicity with Buddhism.
Insights from our engagement with the Karen
Education has an important role in Karen community culture, and the lengths to which the community has gone to organize systems and programs or education, particularly within the context of the Christian Karen, are notable. This is relevant to our later analysis of the type of language used in the cyber-attack on the Karen. Kuroiwa and Verkuyten [9] have highlighted a particular type of leadership scheme of education in their study of the Karen, and our own media project highlighted this emphasis through film produced by Karen parents featuring their children talking about school.
Our participants also gave us a number of examples about surveillance in Burma. For instance, we were told of how, in the Internet cafés in Rangoon, the Burmese government would take over the mouse control just to let people know that they were being watched. So some of the community group were already aware of the government’s capability for digital spying.
Another important factor that has come out of our research is the desire among many to use communication media, surveillance, and information to report on the “invisible war” that has been going on in the jungles of the Karen territories [14]. However, as we have found out, the counter-surveillance has taken new and unexpected forms enabled by new technologies, which subverted our community’s attempts to fight the Burmese regime with information and reporting, a form of counter-power [15].
Shared trauma
Collective and individual trauma is a sensitive subject to explore in most cultural contexts, and this is no different with the Karen. Our work with respondents, especially community leaders, together with the collection of stories related to us about atrocities and human rights abuses inflicted on them, their friends, and families, has drawn quite a clear picture of unresolved trauma among the community [14]. This community is now confronted with a new cultural context in the UK of health care and general societal practices and attitudes that put added stresses on individuals [16]. Many have witnessed murder, destruction, rape, slavery, displacement, or their results, and the younger members of the community have grown up with these stories. Although the telling of the stories may in certain ways be cathartic [10], the threats made, which in fairly specific ways reference the types of violence and oppression they have experienced, can have a particularly powerful impact.
Our study does not allow us to independently make a mental health assessment of this community, and indeed it is not the primary aim of this chapter. Yet the mechanics suggested by Beiser and others [17,18] back up our observations regarding the potentially devastating results of psychological warfare undertaken through surveillance and cyber-attack upon those who have already been physical or emotional victims of a conflict situation. Although we have not undertaken direct mental health assessments of the group in Sheffield, our discussions with community leaders and their particular profiles suggest a high risk and indeed presence of mental illness associated with trauma such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
We do not enter into the debates around defining and diagnosing mental illness in a context of cultural relativism, but instead work with the idea broadly drawn by Beiser [17] that mental illness/trauma is a shared physiological experience potentially moderated by culture but negatively impacting all who experience it in similar ways, even if it is not entirely expressed or admitted in the same manner. Similarly, the fears and paranoias that can be associated with and amplified by those experiences, plus the effect of hostile referencing to those fears through surveillance and subsequent verbal attacks, should not be underestimated in their importance.
Methodological issues
Access to the community
The original research aims were to understand the transnational and local communication practices of the Burmese and Karen communities as a whole, with a focus on new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The approach was not originally constructed to investigate specific questions around ethnic conflict [14]. However, the events that occurred toward the latter part of the project cast a shadow over the original research intentions and provided a scenario worthy of analysis and further investigation, along with unique data whose context and content would not normally be easy to observe or capture. The online presence of blogs that continue to attack this community have subsequently been monitored.
One limitation to this project was language. There has been a heavy dependency upon translation to deliver the training and to understand many of the outputs. The need to translate into both Burmese and Karen languages was the first indication of the political and ethnic sensitivities that required attention. This need resulted in using two different interpreters for two basic language groups: the Burman and Sgaw Karen. Much of the understanding of the attacks on the Karen community relies on the translations of the posts by the community themselves. However, there is no question of the validity of the translations, as they would have no reason to raise such unpleasant allegations about their own community.
At the beginning of the project we considered the problems associated with how revealing individual identities within the Karen community in Sheffield as journalistic participants online might put them or their families at a certain level of risk, especially since the project members highlighted the Burmese government’s dislike of Internet use. Their participation in various online journalistic activities was approached with sensitivity, but it is now perhaps clearer that the community did not fully understand the virtual inverse reach of the Burmese regime. Their resettled positions as refugees in a new country turned out to be not as secure as they had thought.
Ethnography
The ethnographic approach was important but had its limitations. As previously mentioned, this was due to language differences and our research being based around specific joint activities and events, without being entirely embedded in their extended communal and individual activities, as would be the case in a traditional anthropological study of a rural co-located community [19]. Becoming familiar with and getting to know the communities occurred through the training events, visits to homes, interviews, and various public events such as Karen New Year, Teachers Day, a wedding, church services, and a wrist-tying ceremony. The survival strategies taken by Karen communities displaced to Western countries seeking to preserve their social and cultural identity in a foreign environment have been highlighted, as well as the routine and less routine threats that exist to their activities and status [20].
The media training project provided an excellent opportunity to learn about the community through their stories, their aims, their anxieties, and their impediments. The method of engagement with this community was designed to build a relationship of trust, friendship, and exchange of knowledge. Although artificial in certain respects, this project allowed the Karen and Burman to reveal their attitudes and opinions through their engagements with specific tasks. This also helped in the analysis and understanding of the series of events that arose when the group’s project blog was hacked. From an ethnographic point of view, the situation observed took place in a shared virtual environment whose ownership and control came into question at the point of being hacked. Our insight into the community through contact with community leaders, participants in our training, media created for the project, and observations provided important background knowledge for interpreting and making sense of the hacking attack.
Analyzing discourse
Although there was quite extensive material posted on the blog, the material focused on here has been selected by one of the community informants for the attention of the project organizers. The editorial decisions in presenting these as particularly important made them significant in terms of their impact and meaningfulness to the Karen community. The names used in the flaming incident have been concealed to protect their identities and to avoid further dissemination of the allegations and threats made to specific individuals.
We have provided a discourse analysis of this key textual material from these events, which helps to dissect the language of terror within the rubric of actual collective and individual community experience. This approach helps to explain why the threats, insults, and insinuations were experienced as very real. A discourse was reified and combined with lived experience to recall traumas of the past and create new ones in an apparently safe and free context.
The hacking incident
Toward the end of the project, there was a substantial amount of audio, video, and text content that the community had created and displayed on a blog site. At this point, a concerned Karen community leader alerted us to an abuse of the project blog. This constituted an online smear campaign toward community members and activists from the Karen community, many of whom were also participants in the training project.
Although we were aware at the outset that there were possible sensitivities and suspicions that could arise with the ethnic mix of students, we expected that any Burmese government interference might be taken against the university or perhaps the collective group of participating students. The specific ways in which conflict occurred was surprising to us in its nature, form, and consequences, illustrating how difficult it is to predict or control the way that media use develops in any particular situation.
Initially these concerns were raised alongside the idea that the abuse had been done by someone in the group who was a spy. The reasoning behind this, from the community leader’s perspective, was that the messages and content contained personal information that only the community could know. Another justification in support of the spy suspicion was that a video of the group during the very first session (which was not on the blog) had been uploaded onto YouTube. However, a video of the session was uploaded on a different website by an external project coordinator and was probably accessed by the hackers in this way. The Karen community was not aware of this, nor were Sheffield Hallam University staff (who were co-delivering the training with the external contractors), until after the project had finished. This also shows how surveillance of our online activities began at quite an early stage.
The event sent waves though the community, partly because of the nature of the comments and partly because of the trust community members felt they had given to the university. Also, importantly, it connected with their previous experiences with the Burmese government and military. In fact, it was surprising that they continued to attend the final few sessions (although in admittedly fewer numbers). An investigation by university information networking technology experts indicated the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the hacker was in Thailand. However, from the community members’ point of view, this was a dramatic manifestation of the long arm of the Burmese regime. They understood this to be part of the psychological and physical warfare that extended from the ethnic cleansing of Karen communities in Burma, now extended to a newer, “virtual” location. It raised the question of whether there was someone in the community who had tipped off the hackers in Thailand or whether the hackers just found the project information from random search engines (the project particularly highlighted and advertised its purpose online, which was to provide journalistic skills to the Karen community). From the community’s perspective, whether there was an informant in the group or someone was posting messages from Thailand, it highlighted a threat that spies continued to monitor and harass them.
Community leaders were asked to translate some of the messages to help provide the project co-ordinators with a clearer understanding of the incident. The hacked accounts posted sexual images and derogatory content (see translations in the appendix). One participant reported receiving an email threatening the participant’s family and including specific names and personal information. Another participant reported receiving threatening emails and text messages to a mobile phone—again about the participant’s family—and that the details in the email threats included information that only the community could know. User names on the blog were email addresses, so hackers had the email addresses to target the participants directly. Notably, they did not target any of the staff email accounts, nor did they target the Burman participants.
This further fueled the belief that the spy in the group was a Burman participant, not part of the Karen community. Petty tensions between the Karen and Burman groups around the provision of dual language interpreters appeared to move to a new level.
What the community had failed to appreciate was that the audio blog posts, which contained personal information, were spoken in their native tongue and possibly accessed (and invariably understood) by the hackers, and rather the e-mail and test threats was perhaps just a consequence of the hackers making use of the technology and searching through the previous blog posts. The nature of the comments also alleged unfounded rumors of sexual behavior directed specifically at a female activist with a high international profile as a political campaigner. Comments were also directed at her daughter. These came in the form of text messages as well as messages on the blogging site used by the media training project to post media and comments. Login identities, including those of lecturers, were taken over and used to post other lewd and insulting messages. These messages could be seen as immature and ineffectual, but the impact they had was very strong and was seized upon by the Karen as evidence confirming their mistrust of Burmans. It also caused hesitation about using the Internet in any way without the risk of being monitored or attacked.
At the outset of the project we had discussed with some of the group that their online presence as part of the project would make them visible and identifiable in new ways, and despite being in a UK context, engaging in journalistic activities could potentially have ramifications for their friends and relatives in their home countries. However, they were adamant that reporting and publicizing their cause was a priority for them as a community, and by being in another, freer country, they would be able to get their message to the outside world. Ultimately, though, they were shocked by the degree of inverse reach that the new media eventually afforded their opponents in Thailand and Burma. This was a lesson to them (and to us) about the recoiling nature of modern digital communication technologies and how borders of the traditional nation-state afford little protection against this kind of activity.
Later discussions about the incident with Sheffield’s Burmese refugee community identified a significant part of what had happened. A disaffected member of Sheffield’s Karen community (which, not surprisingly, has its own internal tensions, disputes, disagreements, and power struggles), was unburdening to a friend in Burma by phone, and the call was hacked, monitored, and recorded. The details of the gossip were then used as ammunition in the cyber-attacks, both to upset particular prominent community members and to damage their standing and reputations in their immediate community and the wider campaigning KNU community of which they were an active part. An edited version of the phone call also appeared on a Burmese government–monitored website. This was how the community member was eventually identified. We have to rely on the anecdotal evidence of our respondent regarding the technical details of this account, but it explains the availability of sordid gossip, sexual threat, and allegations, along with derogatory comments on aspects of ethnic identity in later blogs and emails.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, flaming was frowned upon and often criticized as a practice [21]. But the modern manifestation of this practice that we encountered had more incendiary and sinister implications than the online bickering that usually characterized such exchanges in the past. Although the nature of the insults, threats, rumors, and allegations were crude and even adolescent, the way these attached to the background of the Karen community in terms of both real practices and tacit threats meant that they needed to be taken seriously as representing more than immature hacking by disenfranchised individuals. It also meant that the ramifications and echoes of this cyber-attack in terms of its emotional and psychological impact were significant [18].
After recently checking a BlogSpot that featured the community video, it is clear that the Karen community in Sheffield are still being targeted. At the time of checking (September, 2011), one particular member of the community had been targeted for being in a relationship with a man from a different ethnic background. The BlogSpot includes personal photographs of the community member and the partner. This approach of undermining ethnic cohesion through allegations of miscegenation is also apparent in the hacked email messages on our project blog. This raises the question of where the personal photographs were accessed from. One answer could be a social networking site such as Facebook, which is used quite widely by some of the younger members of the community. Several of the community members who we built relationships with now have social network profiles, and it would seem that this is a good method of keeping in contact with their family and friends across the world—presumably those located either in the western zones or in the Thai refugee camps. This example demonstrates how material of a personal nature shared on a social networking site and intended for a small circle of friends and family can be subverted and more widely circulated in a recontextualized form to create a distorted narrative by employing the conservative cultural taboos of the community at large, including the global diaspora and its networks of political activists. This recontextualization is perhaps familiar to celebrities and the tabloid press, but increasingly, it can apply to anyone with a media presence who might have affiliations to more than one society or clique.
“We are Watching You”: Analysis of discourse messages posted
Our analysis of the messages posted focuses primarily on the pieces of text contained in the appendix, but our interpretation of them draws on our wider experience and knowledge of this community, as well as other theories and research pertinent to this case study. We have divided the key themes of the allegations made against the Karen community as follows:
A key element of the analyzed material plays upon anxieties and male disempowerment by initially discrediting males through alleging corrupt or immoral behavior. However, another key element in the texts focuses on money. The religious dimension to these allegations also should not be underestimated, as they could be evaluated within a framework of the Ten Commandments. Religious credibility is of supreme importance among the Christian Karen, so any damage to reputations within this biblical rubric can be a powerful weapon of insult.
The psychological disempowerment is further enacted through symbolic rape of wives and daughters (mirroring actual human rights abuses in Burma). When aimed toward women or children, the pattern is to predatorily portray them as sexual targets but also as sexually immoral—more specifically, making allegations of interracial sexual bonds specifically aimed at their daughters. The hackers make use of and play on classic taboos such as miscegenation [22,23], which threaten the future ethnic purity [8] of an isolated community, regardless of whether there is any truth in the allegations. It also builds on anxieties the community holds about the disappearance of their cultural identity through unintentional cultural assimilation. Men, as guardians of culture and identity, are particularly being targeted by these types of allegations (although this is not to diminish the feeling of threat experienced by the women concerned). These anxieties are genuine and possibly well-founded in the longer term, and thus the nature of the threats and allegations are quite sophisticated in manipulating collective community anxieties while at the same time seeking to create community divides.
The systematic way in which these taboos were employed shows a broad strategy for discrediting a carefully chosen list of active individuals who are a threat to the Burmese regime because of their networking, affiliation, leadership, and, more crucially, freedom to communicate—characteristics not previously (or barely) tolerated in Burma. Both female and male members of the community were targeted, primarily community leaders and KNU activists who were also participants in the training we provided, so digital material from them in Karen, English, and some Burman was available online from which details and information were extracted, reprocessed, and used as part of the attack.
Although the financial aspects of the discourse appear as a subcategory under the more general terminology of corruption (above), they are worthy of note because of their frequency in the texts. Our discussions with the Karen indicated that those in the refugee camps, who sometimes receive financial aid from overseas family members despite those family members’ own hardships in the West, tend to hold high expectations of financial opportunities in the UK. These expectations are mainly of perceived opportunities to work, as well as social safety nets that the UK appears to present, even though these perceptions are not entirely accurate. The general struggle for any kind of financial gain among the Karen internationally means that a strategy implying greed and financial corruption, especially at others’ expense, will also play on prejudice to undermine the credibility of those being targeted by the servants of the Burmese regime among their broader constituency.
The third theme of allegations we identified relates to being uncultured and uneducated. Although this may seem trivial in relation to allegations of rape and murder, for instance, the power of insult carried by this allegation in an Asian context should not be underestimated, especially among the Christian Karen, who place a particularly high value on education. Illiteracy or a “fish paste” accent implies a lack of authenticity and credibility in terms of potential leadership.
Motivations behind the threats
The exact motivation of the cyber-attacks on members of the community cannot be identified. They could have been coordinated attempts to target activists by representatives of the Burmese secret services, or perhaps a collection of renegade acts by disaffected individuals. Possible motivations we have identified are as follows:
• Disaffected Karen (unlikely, although this was key in terms of surveillance)
• Jealousy (that the Sheffield community has escaped the regime)
In fact, all of these are dimensions of the surveillance and cyber-attack scenarios we have observed. The fact that, as a standard practice, the Burmese government targets all Internet communication from those who have escaped the regime in an attempt to show those who are living in Burma the wrath of their power and control leads to a variety of methods, and agents. In the case of the refugee/activist diaspora, the surveillance is borderless, limited by the level of visibility of those activists, the methods they take to protect data and online identities, and the content of their public digital imprint. This systematic approach is an extension, across borders, of practices followed in Burma through the inverse reach afforded by digital communication technologies. It’s often not personal, but various techniques are used to make people believe it is. Attacks are three-pronged in terms of the damage they seek to inflict. The first is the damage to reputation, credibility, and standing among the international constituency and perhaps the local community of those being attacked. The second is the potential schism that can be created between competing dissident groups. The third is direct psychological attack against the individuals concerned and the community at large through referencing their fears and prior traumas.
Methods used
The attacks intended to incite the following ideas:
• Surveillance: accessing rumors and exaggerating and disseminating them
• Fear: terrorizing and amplifying trauma
• “Divide and rule”: targeting Karen and Burman dissidents, which encouraged mutual suspicion and lack of unity among diverse resistant groups
The surveillance took several forms: hacking into and recording phone conversations as well as broader online monitoring and gathering of online discourse from the Karen community. This information was used to create a fictional narrative that drew upon taboos, prejudices, and sensitivities among the Karen to attack them. In particular, the attacks relied on trauma derived from experiences testified to in the media pieces the Karen produced for us and in other conversations we have had with them.
The work of Marshall et al. [18] deals with a longer-term study of Cambodian refugees in the United States. The similarities between the two communities’ experiences are striking; the factors listed in [18] match exactly with those experiences of the Karen we have mentioned above. Even more interesting, Beiser outlines what he calls the "re-emergence of risk-inducing painful memory" ([17] p. 556). This is directly induced by the online attackers.
It is significant that although the video uploaded to YouTube included Burmese as well as Karen participants, it was the Karen who were targeted. This relates to the “divide and rule” aspect of the methods used. Many postcolonial nations previously under British rule inherited methods of divide and rule along ethnic lines. The Burmese use of these methods is illustrated in the surveillance and attack methods we witnessed and the predictable inter-ethnic suspicions and accusations that resulted between Karen and Burman exiles.
Impact on the community
Our research confirmed a whole range of stories the Karen community had to tell about things that had happened to them and their relatives over many years at the hands of the Tatmadaw (Burmese military). Although these stories represented a certain badge of identity (if not pride in survival), they also revealed a weakness of lived memories and the possibilities of future online attacks, through which they could continue to be threatened. What perhaps needs to be remembered is that, in cases of post-traumatic stress [24], the reality of the imagined or remembered events and associated psychological states can, at times, seem more real than the prosaic reality of the present moment.
The impact that this cyber-attack had on the community is most significant as it relates to their collective and individual experiences. They saw it implicitly as the Burmese government attempting to intimidate them at long distance; since the government was unable to physically oppress them, it sought to do so psychologically. The intimidation was accomplished by using new media and, to some extent, by turning against the Karen the tools of communication used to highlight their stories. It also raised suspicions that were directed toward non-Karen Burmese in Sheffield, specifically those undertaking the training, partly because of their non-Karen status. However, a discussion with one of the community leaders also indicated that the possibility of a member of the Karen community being in the pay of the Burmese government could not be ruled out. This indicates the level of collective paranoia that can be induced by a cyber-attack that is underpinned by decades of war and oppression.
Because totalitarianism relies on fear as much as on the physical repression that leads to fear [25], these types of events are important even though they don’t make a physical mark. The fact that they were directed at women mirrored the community’s inability to protect children and women from the actions of Burmese soldiers in the Karen territories [8], thereby reminding the community of real events experienced by them, their relatives, or their friends. In response, as was clear from our discussions with community representatives, the community wanted to identify local perpetrators. This brought the physical threat connected to the virtual threats closer, and made it possible to consider acting on the threat in ways they could more easily conceptualize—through identifying and punishing a local perpetrator, as well as asking the university to take responsibility for the fact that the blogging software we had used had been hacked by outsiders. This desire to identify and blame became a tactic of empowerment against the disempowering discourse of the attackers.
Conclusion
There is a danger that the Karen are portrayed as passive recipients of media attacks. However, although naivete on the part of some individuals had allowed the attacks to develop, the very reason that community members had engaged the media training was that they understood the power and necessity of media methods to counter the actions and discourse of those who had for so long held power over them. Their desire to create a counter-power [15] through new media, and their freedom to do so in a Western context, clearly presented a threat to the Burmese regime, which led to these cyber-attacks.
It is not possible to completely untangle the events that took place, nor is it the job of academics to identify the perpetrators. However, through this incident we gained important insight into the reality, nature, and mechanics of a specific set of events leading from surveillance to online attacks. We also saw firsthand the effects of these events in tapping the paranoia and trauma held by the community at large, originating in the long-term domination of the Karen by the Burmese political regime.
We have termed the ability to strike back through the very channels of resistance as “inverse reach.” Inverse reach enables authoritarianism to reach across national boundaries to discredit and undermine individuals and their efforts to work toward political aims outside the regime’s physical purview. Paradoxically, in this case, while ICTs in the hands of the oppressed were demonstrated as offering advantages—especially as tools for empowerment, enabling voices of resistance—they were turned on the users as further tools of oppression.
Targeting specific individuals makes the threat seem more personal—“We know who you are” —and constitutes a tangible and effective form of intimidation. Intellectually, the Karen know they can’t be physically reached, yet the threat of being monitored from a distance is still felt by many members of the community and results in what can seem to be a very tangible experience of attack.
Use of sexual threats and innuendo as tools of manipulation was a predominant aspect of this cyber-terrorism. Using specific names and targeting specific individuals added the dimension of surveillance to the attack. On one hand, the discourse is crude gutter language; on another, it shows a deep understanding of the kinds of anxieties held by the community and how they can be played upon. The online discourse also linked to the Tatmadaw’s known actions against the Karen. Some discourses, such as the accusation of rape, were inversions of acts committed against the Karen.
Notably, the community regarded this event as much more alarming than the local,more reified racial harassment they have experienced in their neighborhoods in the UK, which they also discussed with our researchers. This is a clear indication of the effectiveness of fear as a tool of authoritarianism over long distances. At the same time, the refugee activists can see that they are being effective, in that they are being targeted. There is still a live website that specifically serves to attack the Karen communities in the UK.
With the ceasefire declared between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Burmese government in 2012, it is possible that the cyber-attacks may cease. However, the historical precedent for a cold war indicates that a “war of words” and background military maneuvers and posturing maycontinue despite the cessation of physical hostilities. The situation in Burma since the ceasefire appears to herald the possibility of longer-term peace between the majority Burman regime and ethnic minority communities such as the Karen. However, the apparatus of surveillance and oppression has not yet been dismantled. The memories of past persecution and atrocities are always available to be rekindled and exploited through new forms of psychological warfare, using new media methods to monitor communication and to reach individuals in threatening and intrusive ways far from the zones of physical conflict.
Appendix
The following messages were received by the Karen community who then translated them into English:
• KCA UK is a beggar organisation and they are a bunch of English lackeys.
• Karen refugees in Sheffield are all fake refugees.
• [Eight people—four group members and four associated with the KNU] are racist and making money from the government by organizing demonstration using the community name.
• [Five of the same people named in the previous message—two group members and three associated with the KNU] who work as an interpreter speaks with 90% fish paste assent and making money from the community who can’t even read ABCD.
• [One person, a group member, also named in the previous messages,] came from Ohm Pham refugee camps and he make money while he was in-charge of the aids in the refugee camps. [Name] is living on government doe so he got little money that’s why he forms several groups and creating projects to make money. His eldest daughter got pregnant with one Iraqi animal and run away with him. His other daughter is having a fling with one Iranian animal.
• [Name of male group member] is always looking to have a fling with other men’s wife.
• [Name of a different male group member] is a rapist.
• Name of male who is a group member and KNU member] is fxxxing his own adopted mom. They are fake mom and son. They are really a couple.
Messages from the attackers to the community were also posted on the website: http://liar-peoples.blogspot.com/.
References
1. OpenNet Initiative. Internet Filtering in Burma in 2005: A country study, OpenNet initiative. [Internet]. Retrieved from: http://opennet.net/studies/burma#toc2d>; 2005 [accessed 07.02.12].
2. Nagaraja S, Anderson R. The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement. Technical Report no 746. University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory; 2009.
3. Routledge Handbook of Identity Studies. Elliott A, editor. Routledge, London; 2011.
4. Lieberman VB. Ethnic politics in eighteenth-century Burma. Mod Asian Stud. 1978;12(3):455–482.
5. Heikkilä-Horn ML. Imagining ‘Burma’: a historical overview. Asian ethnicity. 2009;10(2):145–154.
6. Cheesman N. Seeing “Karen” in the Union of Myanmar. Asian Ethnicity 2002;(3):199–220.
7. Harriden J. Making a name for themselves: Karen identity and the politicization of ethnicity in Burma. Journal of Burma Studies. 2002;7:84–144.
8. Horstmann A Confinement and mobility: Transnational ties and religious networking among Baptist Karen at the Thailand-Burma Border. MMG Working papers 10-16. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity; 2010.
9. Kuroiwa Y, Verkuyten M. Narratives and the constitution of a common identity. The Karen in Burma Identities. 2008;15(4):391–412.
10. Dudley S. Materialising exile: material culture and embodied experience among Karenni refugees in Thailand New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books; 2010.
11. Comaroff JL, Comaroff J. Ethnicity, Inc Chicago Studies in Practises of Meaning Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press; 2009.
12. Bradley D. Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. In: the Australian National University: Pacific Linguistics; 1997;1–72. Bradley D, ed. Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics No 14: Tibeto-Burman Languages of the Himalayas. 14.
13. Thawnghmung AM The Karen revolution in Burma: Diverse voices, uncertain ends. East-West Center, Policy Studies 45 (Southeast Asia), USA; 2008.
14. Green G, Lockley E. Communication practices of the Karen in Sheffield: Seeking to navigate their three zones of displacement. Asian J Commun. 2012;22(6):566–583.
15. Castells M. Communication, power and counter-power in the network society. Int J Commun. 2007;1:238–266.
16. Hynes P, Thu YM. To Sheffield with love. Forced migration review. 2008;30:49.
17. Beiser M. Resettling refugees and safeguarding their mental health: Lessons learned from the canadian refugee resettlement project. Transcult Psychiatry. 2009;46:539.
18. Marshall GN, Schell TL, Elliott MN, Berthold SM, Chun CA. Mental health of cambodian refugees 2 decades after resettlement in the United States. J Am Med Assoc. 2005;3(5):294.
19. King T, Wilder WD. The Modern anthropology of South East Asia: An introduction London: Routledge/Curzon; 2003.
20. Cho NV (2009) New media and Burmese diaspora identities in New Zealand. [dissertation]. Auckland University of Technology: Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies; 2009.
21. Gackenbach J. Psychology and the Internet: Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal implications London: Academic Press; 2007.
22. Fanon F Black skin, white masks. 1986 ed. (First ed. 1952). Pluto Press.
23. Foeman AK, Nance T. Reviewed from miscegenation to multiculturalism: Perceptions and stages of interracial relationship development. J Black Stud. 1999;29(4):540–557.
24. Ringold S, Burke A, Glass RM. Refugee Mental Health JAMA:. J Am Med Assoc. 2005;294(5):646.
25. Skidmore M. Darker than midnight: Fear, vulnerability, and terror making in urban Burma (Myanmar). Am Ethnol. 2003;30(1):5–21.
Further Reading
1. Anon Report. Burma, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. US Department of State. [Internet]. 2008 Mar 11. Retrieved from: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100515.htm.
2. Ball D. Security developments in the Thailand-Burma borderlands. Working paper. Australian Mekong Resource Centre; 2003 (9).
3. Chowdhury M. The Role of the Internet in Burma’s Saffron revolution The Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. Internet Case Study Series 2008.
4. Colaric AM, Janczewski LJ. Cyber warfare and cyber terrorism. Information Science Reference London: An imprint of IGI Global; 2007.
5. Crane A. In the company of spies: When competitive intelligence gathering becomes industrial espionage. Bus Horiz. 2005;48:233–240.
6. Danitz T, Strobel WP. Networking dissent cyber activists use the Internet to promote democracy in Burma. In: Arquilla J, Ronfeldt D, eds. Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy. USA: Rand; 2001.
7. Dudley S. A sense of home in exile. Forced Migration Review. 2008;30:23.
8. Refugee health: an approach to emergency situations. In: Hanquet G, editor. Medecins Sans Frontieres. MacMillan Education Ltd. London; 1997. p. 286–291.
9. Johnson HL. Click to donate: Visual images, constructing victims and imagining the female refugee. Third World Q. 2011;32(6):1015–1037.
10. Krekel B. Capability of the People’s Republic of China to conduct cyber warfare and computer network exploitation. US-China Economic & Security Review Commission 2009.
11. Lenner K. Beyond the republic of Fear: Symbolic domination in Ba’thist Iraq. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Mediterranean Programme Series. 2007/32.
12. Nesdale D, Rooney R, Smith L. Migrant ethnic identity and psychological distress. J Cross Cult Psychol. 1997;28:569–588.
13. Sandhu JA. Burmese case study: Far from inherent–democracy and the Internet. The McMaster Journal of Communication. 2011;7.
14. Sharples R. Technology in the borderlands. Forced Migration Review. 2008;30:24.
15. The Karen Women’s Organisation. State of terror: Women at risk. Forced Migration Review. 2008;(30):12.
16. Wortzel L. (2010) China’s approach to cyber operations: Implications for the United States. [Internet]. 2010 [accessed 03.11]. Retrieved from: http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/111/wor031010.pdf.