Liberal website pulls 'Cultural Revolution confession' writing contest
Editor suggests decision made after pressure from authorities
A day after launching a “writing competition” to encourage first-person confessions from former Cultural Revolution Red Guards, a leading liberal website in China was forced to scrap the project.
An editor, surnamed Yuan, at 21ccom.net- also known as “Consensus Network,” suggested to the South China Morning Post in a phone interview on Friday that the website had been pressured by authorities to stop the competition. But he declined to elaborate further.
The original online statement calls for submissions from former Red Guards who had attacked families, teachers and school principals to draft their personal experiences, reflections, and confessions “before it’s too late”.
“If we wait a few more decades, these people might no longer be alive,” said the ad. “And this period of bloody history will be gone with the last bit of humanity.”
The decision to withdraw the writing contest, announced on Thursday, the first day of former Communist party high-flyer Bo Xilai’s trial, disappointed many readers.
“Is it because our government still believes the movement is a righteous one?,” a microblogger wrote.
“They apparently regulate everything - including confessions,” another one wrote.