Exploration 11: Nobel Speeches & Dalai Lama

            One of my favorite passages from the speeches was on page 633 where Mandela talks about Martin Luther King Jr. He states: “Let the striving of us all prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.” This passage was important to me, because it helped to connect the situation in Burma to what happened in the United States during Martin Luther King Jr.’s time. It helped to relate the two situations, which made me understand more of where Mandela was coming from.

            One interesting fact that I found was that the government would react to political protests with severe action. Even though the protests were nonviolent, they still killed and wounded hundreds of people. If you went to trial, you were banished, killed, or put into prison for life. An additional fact I learned was that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for life. I knew he had been put into jail for his political actions, but I did not realize that it was supposed to be a life sentence. I found this information at:   http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.hist.html

            The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet. He is responsible for promoting that all humans are equal. He teaches proper values humans should have as well as promoting religion and tradition. The Dalai Lama is looked at as a person that the Tibetan people can trust.

Tibetan Monks protesting in Nepal in front of a Chinese Embassy.

            The challenges that I found between the two countries were that the people of Tibet feel that their religious freedom is being oppressed. They feel like China is also trying to control who they want as the leader of their religion. In addition, Tibet people feel that there are a lot of Han Chinese migrants in the area. They feel invaded in a sense. The Chinese government claims to be helping Tibet by industrial growth as well as a better economy.