Ad Infinitum

The year 2023 means different things to different people. But here at SMIC, in Shanghai, China, 2023 means a new beginning. It symbolizes a future where we kiss goodbye to the COVID lockdown that has shackled us for the past three years. In the fresh spring breeze, the whole world seemed to be liberated from darkness dominion, or at least, it seemed so.

Without noticing, the war in Ukraine has reached its one-year anniversary, amassing a civilian death toll of over ten thousand, leaving millions more gravely devastated. Glancing over the pictures of refugees, it is hard to not connect these images to those horrors of the Holodomor in 1932 and the face of the brutal dictator to the face of another in 1950. Before the world could even take a moment to mourn, we are suddenly in threat of nuclear Armageddon, echoing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In Myanmar, the country "embraces" its second anniversary of losing freedom to an unjust military coup, much like its history in 1962. The Rohingyas population in Myanmar especially, has faced severe oppressions, and their brave opposition towards total tyranny was crushed in the same fashion as the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Across the world in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, the indigenous Kurdish people share the fate of the Rohingyas, a multi-century old fate of oppression and marginalization by the stronger ethnic group in the region. The terror of the 1986 genocide still lingers today. In the same year, Haiti launched a protest against its last dictator Duvalier in the hopes of feeding its people, but the century old corruption still leaves Haiti as the poorest country in the western hemisphere, leaving the people with no choice but to protest once more.

The pandemic is over! The darkness has faded! But behind the gloom is another layer of shadow. Somehow, the world seems to be more troubled after the pandemic than before, and grave conflicts that threaten our world seem to be more pressing than ever. We are in a cycle of problems, an endless battle towards an impossible future that will last ad infinitum. Yet, that is precisely why we are here. We will be carrying this generation's burden to sanctify our world, to slay the demons of history once more, and to provide that sliver of hope for the next generation. In this cruel samsara, we have been passed the torch.

Rock on,

Secretary General Aaron Yichen Huang

Welcome to SMICMUN VII: Ad Infinitum