It seems the junta in Myanmar has decided that the best way to make friends is to slaughter 700 civilians in six months. The UN, bless their clipboard-wielding souls, has finally confirmed to UK diplomats what anyone with a functioning moral compass already knew: the army is running a spree, not a country.
One imagines the generals sitting around a mahogany table (looted, naturally) clinking teacups and debating whether to call it 'ethnic cleansing' or 'aggressive population management.' The numbers are staggering: 700 dead. That is not a typo. That is not a rounding error. That is seven hundred human beings, each with a story now terminated by a bullet or a bayonet.
But let’s not get emotional. This is geopolitics. The UK diplomats, in their finest Savile Row suits, will presumably send a strongly worded letter, perhaps with a seal on it. And the junta will wipe their boots with it, then demand more weapons from Russia. Meanwhile, the UN, that great colossus of bureaucratic inertia, will hold a meeting, form a committee, and eventually issue a report that gathers dust next to a broken photocopier.
It’s theatre, darling. Pure theatre. The generals kill. The diplomats talk. The rest of us drink. And the world spins on, indifferent to the blood soaking into Myanmar’s soil.
I propose a new strategy: replace the entire UN security council with a pub quiz team. At least they’d get the answers right occasionally. Or, better yet, send in the satirists. Let me have a go at the junta. I’ll write a column so scathing their ears will bleed. But no, I’m just a journalist. And we are powerless, aren’t we? We can only report the horror and hope someone, somewhere, cares enough to stop it.
Myanmar’s generals, listen up: history is watching. And history has a long memory. It remembers tyrants. It remembers butchers. And it remembers the people who stood by and did nothing.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my gin is getting warm.
