Explosive Border: Lives, Fear and Violence at the Thai-Burmese Border along the Salween River (in Thai)
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Abstract
The Salween borderlands at the Thai-Burmese border are spaces of contestation of power to control over territory among states and ethnic minorities, which political conflicts have taken place. Although states have tried to make peace happening on the borderlands, according to their sovereignty, and to respond to regional economic integration, the result is that state actions lead to contradictory outcomes of state violence. The article shows state actions in the Salween borderlands creating violence and changing the borderlands that people have been living to become fighting zones between the Burmese army and ethnic minorities. In the meantime, the cooperation of the Burmese government and the Thai state in association with transnational dam investors, which aims to push the Salween dam projects forward, has oppressed the border people experiencing fear, danger and military violence. Up until now, their lives have become part of violence in everyday life. Hence the suffering of the border people that have been taking place is closely related to sovereign power.
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