UN Security Council members
were left frantically googling ‘Kachin’ and ‘Shan’ during last weeks briefing
by the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, trying to find out who or
what the UN investigators were talking about, it is learned.
UN investigators on Wednesday told the UN Security
Council that Myanmar’s domestic investigation was not credible and called on
the Council to support the referral of Myanmar to the International Criminal
Court, or establish an ad hoc tribunal to investigate and prosecute crimes in Kachin
and Shan States, as well as in Rakhine State.
“We thought we knew our stuff when we learnt that there
are Rohingya people in Myanmar as well as Aung San Suu Kyi and the military,
but the revelations from the Fact Finding Mission that there are other ethnic
groups in Myanmar has taken us aback,” a French diplomat told Burma Tha Din on
condition of anonymity.
In a revealing insight into the operations of the Council,
Burma Tha Din has learnt that the Swedish Ambassador then googled ‘ethnic
people Myanmar’, and using WhatsApp sent a screenshot of a map showing other
ethnic states in Myanmar to the ambassadors present at the meeting.
A Dutch diplomat told Burma Tha Din that they then messaged
everyone suggesting commissioning UNESCO to send explorers into these states,
but luckily the Deputy US Ambassador had prior knowledge of Myanmar and told them
that the British government and American Baptists had already done that 200
years ago.
The Chinese Ambassador then replied “We could have told
you that, we have been making a killing supplying both sides with guns for
decades. (Excuse the pun).”
Karen Pierce then reportedly messaged them back saying it
didn’t matter that Myanmar’s domestic investigation only covered the Rohingya
and not the Shan and Kachin because British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt found
Aung San Suu Kyi to be quite charming and so they were going to keep backing
her domestic enquiry regardless.
The Russian deputy Ambassador at the meeting was apparently
too busy sulking to take part in the WhatsApp chat.
