Personal Reflection- Matt Velasquez

This event tells us that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations is meaningless. If they cannot enforce the declaration then there is no use in having it in the first place. The U.N. cannot expect every leader of every nation to follow the declaration just because it is the right thing to do. I think that human rights should come before everything else and if the U.N. can't support that idea, someone else will have to. This event relates to the Holocaust in that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed that did nothing wrong. Also, this event was somewhat of a racial rejuvenation in the eyes of Pol Pot. Their goal was to create one ultimate race of people.

This event denies the principle of humanism and the idea that all individuals matter. People were killed based on their race, education level, economic status, and governmental status. According to the Khmer Rouge, only those who they thought were suitable for the new society could live. They clearly did not believe that the individual mattered of had any rights. I believe in humanism, but clearly some people on the world, as this event displays, do not.

This event makes me scared that people like Pol Pot can come to power and kill people in their countries. I think that if there was a way, people should have a better way of picking their leaders in all countries. The U.N. could regulate leaders in smaller, weaker nations so nothing like this could ever happen again. The problem with this is that this system would completely ruin the sovereignty of that nation. This event also makes me wonder how people who follwed Pol Pot could live with themselves killing innocent people. Especially since they used pick axes and shovels instead of guns to kill people. I do not understand those people. I really wished that more leaders were caught and prosecuted. The least the U.N. could do was prosecute the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, since they couldn't stop the killings when they were occurring. They should have at least tried the leaders earlier, not waiting until later this year to finally do it.

I have so much sorrow for all of the victims. I could not even begin to imagine what they went through and how scary it must have been for them. I pity them too because they didn't do anything wrong and they were still executed. The actions of the state in this situation were not at all justified. The Khmer Rouge had no right, according to the UDoHR, to kill anyone.

To me, peacekeeping efforts by the U.N. in sovereign countries are acceptable. If people are dying and or being tortured then the U.N. must do something. I think that if a leader tortures or kills innocent people in his or her country, then he or she forfeits their leadership and the sovereignty of their country. If the U.N. wanted to step into stop something horrible happening in the U.S.A., I would encourage it. These events would be taking place right in front of me, if not to me, so I think that I would want the U.N. to step in more than ever.