tirsdag 31. mai 2016

Confessions of a Red Guard, 50 years after China's Cultural Revolution


I have lived a life haunted by guilt. In 1966, I was one of Chairman Mao Zedong's Red Guards. Myself and millions of other middle and high school students started denouncing our teachers, friends, families and raiding homes and destroying other people's possessions. Textbooks explain the Cultural Revolution -- in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions more abused and traumatized -- as a political movement started and led by Mao "by mistake," but in reality it was a massive catastrophe for which we all bear responsibility. Read more