From: qye@next5 (QIAN YE)
Subject: Re: Cannibalism in Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution
Organization: Michigan Technological University
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:31:39 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.223651.24288@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>  
fswmto@walleye.lerc.nasa.gov (Wai-Ming To) writes:
> 
>    The following article, written by Nicholas D. Kristof for the New
> York Times on 1/6/1993, is about cannibalism in Guangxi Province during
> the Cultural Revolution in the late 60's. A portion of the Chinese
> official document on the cannibalism was also pictured on the paper.
> The New York Times also ran a story on Mr. Zheng Yi, the prominent
> dissident who smuggled these documents out of China.
> 
>  
========================================================================== 
===
> 
> 
> 		A  TALE  OF  RED  GUARDS  AND  CANNIBALS
> 
>    Newly disclosed confidential government documents suggest that the
> Cultural Revolution plumbed previously unreported depths of savagery.
>    The documents, prepared by local government offices in the 1980's,
> two decades after the events they describe, seem to offer a meticulous
> record of how Red Guards and Communist officials in one province not
> only tortured their victims to death but also ate their flesh.
>    Copies of the documents have been smuggled out of China by Zheng Yi,
> a prominent writer wanted by the Chinese authorities for his work for
> the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989. After three and a
> half years as a fugitive, Mr. Zheng is to arrive in New York on
> Wednesday.
> 
> 			Some  Ugly  Details
> 
>    At some high schools, students killed their principals in the school
> courtyard and then cooked and ate the bodies to celebrate a triumph over
> "counterrevolutionaries", the documents report. Government-run  
cafeterias
> are said to have displayed bodies dangling on meat hooks and to have
> served human flesh to employees.
>    "There are many varieties of cannibalism," declares one report, "and
> among them are these: killing someone and making a late dinner of it,
> slicing off the meat and having a big party, dividing up the flesh so
> each person takes a large chunk home to boil, roasting the liver and
> eating it for its medicinal properties, and so on."
> 
> 	A  dissident  tells  of  documents  infused  with  gore.
> 
>    The documents suggest that at least 137 people, and probably hundreds
> more, were eaten in Guangxi Province in southern China in the late  
1960's.
> In most cases, many people ate the flesh of one corpse, so the number of
> cannibals may have numbered in the thousands.
>    The cannibalism was apparently confined to parts of Guangxi Province,
> a relatively remote area, and was subsequently kept quiet. There is no
> evidence that anyone in the national Communist Party leadership endorsed
> it or even knew it.
>    The documents are stamped with official seals, and there is no
> indication of any tampering. A spokesman for the Guangxi Region Foreign
> Affairs Office said he could not comment on whether there had been
> cannibalism and could not allow a reporter to visit the area and
> investigate directly.
>    The incidents reported from Guangxi were apparently the most  
extensive
> episodes of cannibalism in the world in the last century or more. They
> were also different from any others in that those who took part were not
> motivated by hunger or psychopathic illness.
>    Instead, the actions appeared to be ideological: the cannibalism,
> which took place in public, was often organized by local Communist Party
> officials, and people apparently took part together to prove their
> revolutionary ardor.
> 
> 			A  Proof  of  Loyalty
> 
>    In an interview after he left China and was waiting for his United
> States visa, Mr. Zheng cited one example from his own research in  
Guangxi:
> the first person to strip meat from the body of one school principal was
> the former girlfriend of the man's son; she wanted to show that she had  
no
> sympathy for him and was just as "red" as anybody else.
>    "These are the most gruesome and shocking revelations to date on the
> Cultural Revolution," said Robin Munro, an Asia Watch specialist on  
China
> and one of the few people who have examined the documents. "This  
evidence
> reveals horrors from the Cultural Revolution that rival in character if
> not in scope the worst excesses of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia."
>    Mr. Zheng said he secretly photographed the documents on trips to
> Guangxi Province in 1986 and 1988, using a false letter of introduction  
to
> win cooperation from the authorities.
>    Even by the standards of the period, the horrors reported from  
Guangxi
> extend into previously unknown territory. Mr. Zheng cites an example  
from
> the documents of a woman who was forced to identify and denounce the
> mutilated corpse of her husband, who had been killed, stripped of his  
flesh
> and mostly eaten. As punishment for having loved a  
"counterrevolutionary",
> she was then forced to sleep with his head beside her.
>    Some of those reportedly involved in the cannibalism received minor
> punishments when the Cultural Revolution ended after Mao's death in  
1976.
> Wuxuan County expelled 91 people from the Communist Party for having  
eaten
> human flesh, and it demoted or cut the wages of 39 non-members of the
> party, but apparently no one faced criminal prosecution.
> 
>  
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=
> -- 
> 
>  
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---
> Wai-Ming To			|     phone: 216-433-5937
> NASA Lewis Research Center     	|    
> Cleveland, Ohio  44135         	|     email:  
fswmto@walleye.lerc.nasa.gov 
>  
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That is a really horrible things. But however, there is tradition of  
eating human's meat in some area in China. Even in some developed area.
 In 1940's, My grandfather denoted his fresh of his leg to his father when  
his father was ill seriously. It is said that his father would be well if  
his son denoted fresh. So i think in some undeveloped area like GuangXi,  
people don't think that eating human's meat is so bad.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan,soc.culture.hongkong