(Minghui.org) What dictators fear most is losing the support of the armed forces, and when this happens, it's as if a ferocious beast has lost its teeth.
During the Romania Revolution, even though the military initially opened fire at the command of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, they switched sides later on and supported the popular uprising, which was followed by the demise of Ceausescu.
The End of Romanian Communism
When former Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was in power, the Romanian economy declined after a brief rise. This led to heavy rationing of food, water, oil, heat, electricity, medicine, and other daily necessities.
Furthermore, after visiting China and North Korea in 1971, Ceausescu issued the July Theses and started a mini cultural revolution similar to that of communist China. The control of free speech was extremely tight, and people had to register with the authorities even to have a typewriter at home. People could only resort to political jokes as a way to mock the government.
These crises resulted in serious opposition from Romanian citizens, which further mounted by 1989. As Ceausescu continued to denounce anti-communist revolutions in November 1989 and his government attempted to evict a pastor the following month, students spontaneously joined the demonstration. Military forces and police opened fire on December 17 and the victims included men, women, and children.
As the situation escalated, Ceausescu labeled the protest as “interference of foreign forces in Romania's internal affairs” and an “external aggression on Romania's sovereignty” in a televised speech on December 20. The next day, he called a large rally in Bucharest a “spontaneous movement of support” for the dictator, through he was actually met with booing and heckling. Although soldiers cleared the street that day and arrested hundreds of people, more people joined the demonstration the following day.
Following the mysterious death of the Romanian defense minister on December 22, Ceausescu immediately assumed leadership of the army. Believing the defense minister had been murdered, the soldiers switched allegiance to support the revolution almost en masse.
After Ceausescu and his wife fled, first in a helicopter then by car, almost all Romanian radios were broadcasting the same message: “Citizens, please be aware that Ceausescu and Elena, the enemies of the people, are fleeing in a hijacked purple Dacia sedan. Please arrest them.” Ceausescu and his wife were captured and executed three days later.
Dictators like Ceausescu are dead, but the countries they used to rule are still there, the people are still there, the army is still the army, and the police are still the police. This shows that the army and the police are not private assets of the dictators, but belong to the people. Getting rid of the dictators would not be the end of the country and the people would only be living a better life.
What has been unfolding in China in the past few decades is also a tale of soldiers and police being brainwashed to blindly follow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and now beginning to awaken to the CCP's brutality.
During Chinese Civil War, the CCP’s Army Opened Fire on People Fleeing Starvation
Inside China, the CCP has brainwashed soldiers with the doctrines of brutality, turning them into a killing machine with little sense of conscience. One example was the Siege of Changhun (capital city of Jilin Province) in 1948 right before the CCP took power in China.
“In what China’s history books hail as one of the war’s decisive victories, Mao’s troops starved out the formidable Nationalist garrison that occupied Changchun with nary a shot fired. What the official story line does not reveal is that at least 160,000 civilians also died during the siege of the northeastern city, which lasted from June to October of 1948,” wrote a New York Times article on October 1, 2009, titled “China Is Wordless on Traumas of Communists’ Rise.”
Changchun city was not taken by force, but by the CCP’s army tightly bottling up the Kuomintang's (KMT) army and citizens in the city until they ran out of food and starved to death. The CCP’s policy at the time was to “turn Changchun into a dead city.” Furthermore, the CCP ordered its army to open fire even on starving civilians trying to flee the city for survival.
According to “Selected Historical Records of the Shenyang Military Region Command,” the CCP ordered soldiers to slaughter the hungry people who came out of the city: “Do not let the starving people get out of the city. Those who have already come out must be blocked and driven back... People knelt down in groups in front of our guarding soldiers and begged to let them go. Some dropped their babies and children and ran away; some hung themselves in front of our guards... Some soldiers let go of some people on the quiet, but they were quickly disciplined. Soon the situation changed, and soldiers began to beat, curse and tie up people, even open fire on anyone who tried to escape from the city. A large number of civilians were killed this way.”
A KMT national army officer recalled, “Outside the city wall gate, bodies of civilians lay in a way as if they were drawing a line between the two opposition armies. The starving people went out of the city, but they could not pass through the CCP army’s blockade and they could not get back in the city. Some kept running back and forth till they collapsed or were killed. I remember dying babies staring at me, even in my dreams.”
In his book “Guan Shan Duo Lu,” Taiwanese writer Wang Dingjun recorded a KMT company commander describe that when the CCP soldiers saw the starving people kneeling down and begging them, they shed tears too, but they nonetheless firmly carried out the orders.
“If the starving people did not listen to them, they would still shoot them. He saw the bleeding bodies himself. He said he was overwhelmed that the CCP could train their soldiers to behave this way... their soldiers could go against principles and their conscience in carrying out orders,” the commander recalled, “The KMT soldiers could never do such inhumane things. We would never do such things.”
CCP Police Officers Are Waking up
Under the tyrannic rule of the CCP, the army and police have become a state apparatus to suppress the people rather than agencies that protect the people. The CCP allocates large amounts of funds and bonuses every year as incentive to suppress people in the name of “maintaining domestic stability.”
Since July 1999 when Jiang Zemin launched the persecution of Falun Gong, a large number of Falun Gong practitioners have been unlawfully arrested and subjected to brutal torture, and thousands have lost their lives as a result.
However, thanks to Falun Gong practitioners’ unremitting efforts in truth clarification over the years, some police and domestic security officers have come to understand the illegality and brutality of the persecution of Falun Gong. They were touched by the kindness and perseverance of Falun Gong practitioners. Many police officers have awakened their conscience and become clear-headed amidst the lies told by the CCP.
A Falun Gong practitioner once had nearly a thousand empty CD cases stored in his warehouse. They would be used to produce DVDs with information about the persecution of Falun Gong.
One day, two officers from the local police station showed up to search his store and found the empty CD cases. When the practitioner tried to dissuade them from confiscating them, they claimed that they were merely following orders from the domestic security office.
The practitioner told them, “Before East and West Germany were unified, an East Berlin soldier was ordered to open fire on anyone trying to get over the Berlin wall. He shot a young man dead. After the wall was torn down, the soldier was charged and sentenced to prison. His superior had given him the order to fire, but the soldier chose to hit his target. I know your chief ordered you to come here and search the place, but he did not tell you specifically to take these things away.”
The officers did take his CD cases that day, but soon secretly returned them to a store the practitioner owned, which was near the police station.
On another occasion, when a new police chief was assigned to the local station, he telephoned the practitioner to say that his office door was broken and asked if the practitioner could come over and repair it. But as he arrived, nobody was around when the practitioner went to the chief's office, and nothing was wrong with the door. Instead, there was a bag containing over 20 Falun Gong books near the door.
Realizing that the police chief had intended for him to take the confiscated books, the practitioner retrieved the books and was very happy for the choice the police chief had made.
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