Kenneth Ellman

October 19, 2014, Kenneth Ellman Comments on The Economist article “Police Firearms-Weaponised”, Email:ke@kennethellman.com, Box 18, Newton, New Jersey 07860. There Are No Police In a Dictatorship. Copyright 2014, Kenneth Ellman, All Rights Reserved.

In reading the account of the terrorist attack upon innocent and helpless Chinese civilians in the Chinese City of Kunming, we should not forget that China does not have Police as we know it. There are no Police in China because there is no independent Judiciary in China. You cannot have a Police Force as we know it without a Court system as we also know it. The two are inseparable. Sometimes, this difference of World, becomes revealed, as truth intrudes upon fantasy and reality stands exposed. Books are written of the total deprivation of the Chinese people of law.

I remember the case of Wang Zong Xiao which can be found at 837 F.Supp. 1500 and 1506 and other citations. The Wang case is a continuous reminder of what can happen when we forget that difference. We can also see raw gangster force now, today, intruding into the fantasy that the British Legacy of Law and Democracy promised to Hong Kong can stand against the reality of Dictatorship in China. We hope it does stand but as of now I would not count on it. What happens to the Chinese people of Hong Kong will reveal more about modern China than anything since the Cultural Revolution. While how the Dictators of China treat the people of Hong Kong should govern how we treat China, it is unfortunately probable that money talks louder than human dignity. Because China is currently a great and significant participant in the economics and trade of Western nations, we sometimes forget that there is more to a nation than the exchange of product and money. There is something else that we value that is not able to be sold or purchased. It is something you fight for and defend.

In this instant case the people known as “Uighurs”, appear to have committed a cowardly attack upon the Chinese public as part of the continuing conflict between them and the Chinese Communist Dictatorship. However, Amnesty International states regarding the deprivation of the Uighur people in China: “The authorities [Chinese Dictatorship] maintained their “strike hard” campaign, criminalizing what they labeled “illegal religious” and “separatist” activities, and clamping down on peaceful expressions of cultural identity.”

If China was a Democracy with Law, then the attacks attributed to the “Uighurs”, would be of a Criminal and Terrorist nature. But who amongst us wants to endorse the concept that a Military Dictatorship such as China, no matter how wealthy, is protected by and has the same right to govern, as we accord people living in a Democracy?! So yes, China should and must try to protect its innocent citizens from terror. But the best protection China can give its people is to allow the Chinese the right to govern themselves. Allow Democracy and Law to reach China and raise up the nation. Then perhaps China will have a Police Force, whether armed or not, that protects the people and not the Dictatorship. There is little fear of firearms in possession of the Police in a Democracy, since such Police are accountable to the people. Whether the Chinese Dictatorship more widely distributes firearms to its Police will not protect the Chinese people. Freedom and Democracy will. Kenneth Ellman, email: ke@kennethellman.com, Box 18, Newton, New Jersey 07860

This Comment can be seen at: The Economist