Evan's Reflection period 5

This illegal repression of Tibet by the people's Republic of China shows that the UN is not doing what it should be. When China first invaded Tibet, the Dalai Lama pleaded to nearby countries to aid them in their fight for individual freedom, but none of his calls for help were successful, and Tibet was soon under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government. The UN's job is to ensure diplomatic resolution to all conflicts that may arise between countries to avoid violence, as well as to make sure that all people follow the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When Tibet was repressed, the UN took no action against the Chinese, even if their annexation of Tibet was illegal. This trend would continue throughout several decades and still the UN did nothing to stop this. This goes to show that while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is upheld in almost every country of the world, violation of these rules is not enforced by the UN. This occurence is similar to the Holocaust for several reasons.

First, even though people all over the world have knowledge of what is happening in this country, nothing is being done to help the innocent Tibetans. In addition, Chinese people are continually immigrating to Tibet, much like Germans spread into captured countries for more living space. Finally, people are stripped of all of their rights in Tibet, just like the Holocaust. As in th Holocaust, people of a certain religion, in this case buddhism, are discriminated against and have to go through riots, similar to pogroms, by the people who opress them and destroy their places of religion and their homes as well.

The events that occured during this repression overall denied the general idea of humanism. Humanism is the principle that stresses the importance of the individual. When the Chinese took contol of Tibet, their laws removed almost all of the rights of the native Tibetans. People lost their right to do anything that did not conform to the ideas of the Chinese, anything that might make them an individual. When a person had enough courage to speak out against their Chinese rulers, they were put into a forced labor camp, similar to the labor camps of the Holocaust, until they changed their ideas about the Chinese. All in all, what the Chinese have done to the Tibetans has removed all traces of humanistic ideas from the Tibetan public, and when anyone has any feelings that are anti-chinese, they do not speak out, for fear of being captured and detained by the Chinese government.

When the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1949, China used several reasons to justify their seizure of their nighboring country. All of their reasons covered up another motive for the invasion, the revenge for the Dalai Lama's offense of their leader, Mao Zedong, when he refused to sign an agreement with China. Another reason they invaded Tibet was that they believed they would bolster the economy of Tibet. This seemed like an okay thing to me at the time, then I found out that this benefit came at the cost of Tibetan human rights. I believe that nothing on Earth could be worth the cost of your rights as a human. All of the reasons that China invaded Tibet were justified in the eyes of the Chinese, but they were breaking the rules established by the UN to gain power amongst the locals. In my opinion, the cost of invading Tibet, as in being view negatively viewed by the entire world, just for claiming Tibet, a rocky and mountainous region of central Asia, that had no real use to the Chinese.

I believe that the UN should have full power over the sovereignty of other countries, including ours. When a country invadeds the sovereignty of another country, I believe that the UN should at least investigate the situation and have a vote on whether or not they should take action against the conflict. There should be some sort of trial where a representative from each country presents information to the UN and after all of the information was presented, they would vote. I believe that if they wished to invade the sovereignty of the US, then they should have the right to, as long as they did not break the universal declaration of human rights. All in all, the UN, being a worldwide organization, should be able to allow or deny a conflict to occur between countries.