Political Stewardship: Is Democratic Dissent A Crime?

In The News

BBC News Europe talks about China calling Liu Xiaobo, the democratic dissident, a criminal and actively seeking to sabotage the attendance of ambassadors to the noble peace prize ceremony. Meanwhile, according to BBC, China has place Liu’s wife under house arrest and Liu’s brothers under police surveillance as at the date of the report. This raises the question, is democratic dissent a crime?

Democratic Dissent, Is It A Crime?

Let’s take a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say, democratic governments all over the world, start arresting all communists and jail them as criminals. Would that be acceptable to China? However, unlike China, many democratic governments are more logical, reasonably practice human rights and are politically civilized, thus, they do not go about arresting and jailing people for their ideological differences. One of the largest democracies in Asia, India, even allows the communist party of India (CPI) to stand for elections as a national party. If democracy does not consider the communists as criminals, why is China considering democratic dissidents as criminals? If China argues that its courts have found democratic dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo as criminals, this is expected. Any kangaroo court will announce the pre-determined judgments of its political masters. Just as China does not recognize democratic political dissidents, democratic dissidents do not recognize kangaroo courts and its judgments. So, as far as democratic dissidents are concerned, as the communist are not considered criminals, democratic political dissidents are not criminals. What are the other reasons why democratic dissent is not a crime?

Why democratic dissent is not a crime?

Democratic dissent is a peaceful ideological process that does not involve criminal violence, incarcerations and intimidations. Those who seek to suppress democratic dissent, most of the time use criminal violence, incarcerations and intimidations.

The objective of democratic dissent is the call for recognition of the fundamental and universal human right practices. It is the suppression of the fundamental and universal human right practices that is a crime against humanity.

Democratic dissent seeks for fairness and justice for all persons, which are actually the moral and religious values ingrained within the major religions and cultures of the world. It is the deliberate ignorance of these values that creates lawless social environments. So, those who seek to suppress democratic dissent are seeking to destroy the moral and religious heritage in terms of values that are universal to all people.

Democratic dissent seeks for freedom of thought and expression. The ability to think creatively and express productively is what makes humans different from animals. Those who seek to suppress democratic dissent desire that people should remain as conditioned animals who would serve them as robots. In other words, those who suppress democratic dissent want to be the only thinking beings while others remain as animals. Isn’t this desire to suppress the ability to think creatively and express productively a reversion in the progress of any civilization? Democratic dissent seeks progressive global communities.

Democratic dissent seeks physical and mental freedom for all persons. Democratic dissent wants to avoid the possible political and social phenomenon of having global prison-like communities whose wardens are their rulers. It wants to avoid going back to feudal ages where everyone lives by the sword and only the fittest survives. One can even now see where citizens of certain countries seek to flee their prison-like nations. And we call them political refugees. Is this what we want for our nations?

I can go on giving reasons why democratic dissent is not a crime. But I believe the above suffice. The onus to change the mindset for political, social and economic progress is not on the democratic dissidents. It is on those who are against democratic dissent.