During the Cultural Revolution from January 1970 to May 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued three consecutive central documents No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6. The main content of these documents was to launch a nationwide mass campaign against existing counter-revolutionary crimes, corruption and theft, speculation and wastefulness. The campaign lasted until the end of October 1970, when it basically ended. This campaign came and went quickly. It was the third part of the Cultural Revolution, following the crackdown on “capitalists”, “reactionary authorities” and “purging the class ranks”, and the target of the crackdown and persecution was different from the previous two, with the goal of targeting the common people. I lived in a small county in southern Shaanxi in 1970 and experienced this bloody political movement firsthand, witnessing with my own eyes the cruelty and madness in a society that had lost the rule of law and human rights, in order to remember history and warn future generations. In order to remember history and warn future generations, it is necessary to let the people of today understand the objective facts of the time and see what kind of suffering and misery was brought to the common people in that disaster-ridden society.
Ningxia County is located in the deep mountains of the Qinling Mountains, and in 1970 the county had a population of less than 40,000, with only one street two miles long and about 3,000 to 5,000 people living there. Those who could not find any problems were put on white armbands like Jews and put to work in the county under the supervision of the masses, so it was almost difficult to find any conspicuous class enemies in the organs. However, under the auspices of the county military control group at that time, all county organs, including primary and secondary schools, held a mobilization meeting of nearly 1,000 people in the auditorium of the then cinema. The people of the county were called upon to carry out a powerful campaign of “one fight, three revolts” from top to bottom.
At that time, I attended Ning Shaanxi Middle School, and I remember that after the mobilization meeting held by the military control group, the school immediately took action, calling on teachers and students to “raise vigilance to prevent class enemy disruptions and sabotage”, and students who lived at school at night carried homemade red cherry guns as required, and stood guard, duty, and sentry duty for the so-called school protection activities. In the early spring season, the mountains were cold, the night sky was dark, and from time to time, a few mournful barking dogs came from the wilderness, scaring people’s sweat and shivering.
Soon after, in late March, the school held an emergency meeting to inform everyone that the class enemy was trying to destroy the victorious achievements of the Cultural Revolution, and that they had contacted the Kuomintang reactionaries in Taiwan to scatter all kinds of reactionary leaflets by air in Baoshan, Qinling, which had been seized by our basic militia. This is a great victory achieved since the county-wide “One Fight, Three Oppositions” campaign.
A week later, the county military control committee held a public meeting to announce the bust of the Taiwan-linked counterrevolutionary enemy organization and to sentence the captured counterrevolutionaries in accordance with the law. The weather was gloomy on the day of the assembly, and the soldiers of the county squadron set up machine guns (in groups of two) early on the heights around the walls of the playground of Ningxia Middle School, so that the machine gun fire could control the entire assembly venue. At about 10:00 a.m., in a burst of rousing slogans to defeat the counter-revolutionaries and carry the Cultural Revolution to the end, a group of two soldiers from the county squadron carried the four prisoners to the conference site like chickens. In order to prevent the class enemies from raising their heads and shouting slogans, a rope had to be strung around their necks. In addition, in order to overwhelm the class enemy, the executioner had to pass his own arm under the bound arm of the prisoner, and once the prisoner tried to move, your arm would be lifted and the prisoner would fall to the ground in pain, and if you used force, the prisoner’s arm would break.
The sentencing conference began, the head of the county military control committee began to pronounce the “heinous crimes” of these people. They were forest workers from the Ningdong Forestry Bureau or local farmers, aged around 20. One of them was Zhang Dixue, a junior high school graduate who had returned to his hometown to work as a farmer. He made his own ore semiconductor radio and listened to the radio together with several other people, but was arrested after being exposed as listening to foreign broadcasts and engaging in counter-revolutionary collusion. This is the main criminal fact that the so-called enemy agents colluded with the enemy organizations in Taiwan to conspire to subvert our red regime. As for the so-called leaflets, because the place of occurrence is located in the deep mountains of the Qinling Mountains, one of the somewhat educated people writing diaries was said to be an enemy leaflet.
The General Assembly declared that these people were reactionary in their thinking and conspired to subvert my Red regime by contacting enemy agents outside the country, which was a very serious crime. After the verdict was announced, the criminals were immediately dragged to the river bank behind Ningxia Middle School and shot to death in a burst. At that time, one of the youths was hit in the brain, but he did not die immediately. “Baa!” Two more shots were fired at the head of the prisoner who was still gasping for breath, and the prisoner’s brain immediately split open. The Minister of the Military Control Council, Ma, kicked the prisoner twice with his foot, which was wearing a long horse boot, to see if he still had breath. …… The schoolchildren who were being educated at the scene at the time to see the results of the fight against the current counter-revolution were frightened by this action and cried.
I was also with the school organization to watch the phenomenon, and now whenever I think of the scene of the bodies that were strewn about, I get chills and goose bumps.
This counter-revolutionary enemy case from the heavy and fast and strict treatment of combat less than a month, the county military management announced another cracked a hidden 20 years of history counter-revolutionary case, said that this is “a fight three anti” deep digging deep class enemies achieved significant victory results. A total of nine people were shot in this case, and all the prisoners were escorted to the auditorium of Ning-Shanxi High School before the public meeting. A dozen prisoners (including those sentenced to a term of imprisonment) were peasants, all dressed in rags in the cold wind, with their hands tied behind their backs, shivering and cowering in the corners.
After the public meeting, the nine class enemies sentenced to death were dragged to the paddy field and all of them were killed with a burst of gunfire. The Cultural Revolution has a habit of not allowing families to collect the bodies of prisoners who were shot on the spot, but to display them for a day so that the general public can receive class education from the unpleasant bloody murder scene that touches everyone’s soul, in order to achieve the purpose of severely combating the class enemy’s sabotage. So generally the families of the prisoners collect the bodies quietly after the dead bodies are buried in the wilderness for a few weeks, and choose the late night moment to dig people out again and transport them back home.
The third batch of the county military control committee shot six counter-revolutionaries. I did not attend the public sentencing conference, and there was an interval of about one month between this action and the first two public sentencing conferences.
After the summer of 1970, the mass shooting of people began to slow down, and more of the existing counter-revolutionaries were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment. For example: Huayan Commune Cao Gou brigade leader Wen Deqing bought a plaster statue of Chairman Mao in the winter season, the cold in the back of the cage for fear of crushing, hold in the hand too cold for fear of breaking, they used a rope tied to the head of the plaster statue, one hanging on their own neck, walking in the street was caught and put in prison, and then in the county’s communes in turn to criticize the physical and mental suffering great destruction. After the military control committee understood that he was a production brigade leader and a poor peasant, he was imprisoned for several months and then sent back to the same place to supervise labor, so he was lucky to escape from prison.
In 1970, the only prison in the county was overcrowded because too many prisoners were arrested during the “One Fight, Three Opposition” campaign. In 1970, the county arrested nearly 100 people and shot dozens of people, the most once shot 17 people and arrested 38 people. As far as I can remember, there were no people from county organs, schools or other departments, but all farmers, forest workers or ordinary people among those arrested and shot. A total of 160 cases were cleared in the county, and 356 people were killed, imprisoned and controlled.
The year 1970 was also the busiest year for Ning Shaanxi County in terms of the number of killings, the number of people imprisoned, and the county jail since history was recorded. It was also the most horrible and bloody year experienced by the local people.
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