Thread by @badiucao

1. My Op-ed with @abcnews On Chinese athlete wearing Mao‘s Badges in a #Olympics medal ceremony.

The Olympics is no place to praise a tyrant. They should be disqualified from their gold medal winning event.

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abc.net.au/religion/the-o…

2. When I saw the badges of Mao, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. To me, it rekindled the painful memory of my father’s tragic childhood. For this badge, once worn by millions across the country, it is still a poignant icon of the brutality of China’s ruling party.

3. Between 1957 and 1959, Mao’s Anti-Rightist Campaign purged at least 550,000 people — including most leading artists and intellectuals. My grandfather, one of the first film makers in China, was brutally persecuted and killed during this very campaign.

4. His films were labelled “poisonous grass” by those carrying out the purge. Eventually, he was sent to a labour camp in far west China to receive “re-education”, where he was forced to do extremely heavy physical works in order to be “reformed” as a new person.

5. He died there, far away from home, due to the lack of food and disease.
Thousands of kilometres away, my family only learned about my grandfather’s death months later. There were no remains of my grandfather; nothing to be retrieved — only a notice from the local government.

6. From 1959 to 1961, the Great Chinese Famine caused by Mao’s radical planned economy policy — “The Great Leap Forward” and the “People’s Communes” — killed tens of millions of people, with some estimates putting the death toll as high as thirty million.

7. In the last decade of Mao’s life, from 1966 to 1976, he launched the Cultural Revolution which helped him to grasp absolute power successfully by means of a nationwide personality cult. But this decade of political catastrophe

8. Mao‘s campaign destroyed economy, wiped out tradit culture, and saw around two million more innocent Chinese civilians killed. Party officials, teachers, and intellectuals were publicly humiliated, beaten, and in some cases murdered or driven to suicide.

9. In 1966, People’s Daily — the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — published a series of high-profile stories about how Mao’s badges were sent to remote border sentries.

10. The obsession with badges helped Mao establish a god-like image among Chinese people. Mao’s mummified body still lies entombed and on display in Tiananmen Square, embodying, if you like, the despotic stranglehold of the CCP over the nation’s life.

11. During the peak of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s badges were worn by almost every Chinese as a form of fealty. It was a key symbol of the Mao-cult, and the insignia of this brutal campaign.

12. Young people even pinned the badges directly to their chest muscles and showed off the scars as evidence of loyalty to the Chairman. On the flip-side, a hint of disrespect toward Mao’s image could get people persecuted or imprisoned during these ten years.

12. The revival of the use of Mao’s badges has an undeniable political motivation. Chinese President Xi Jinping, regarded as the most powerful figure since Mao, has fully oriented China towards nationalist fervour and has praised communist ideology throughout the 100year of CCP.

13. As a China-born citizen who lost members of his family during Mao’s reign of terror, it was traumatic to see those badges being worn during a medal ceremony. It also makes me angry to see young Chinese athletes fail to learn the brutal truth of China’s history.

14. To celebrate with this badge contributes to that ignorance and misleads others. In other words, their decision to wear the Mao badges is a form of political propaganda.

15. I don’t entirely agree with the IOC implementation of Rule 50 of its Olympic Charter, prohibiting political demonstrations by athletes. The Olympics are unavoidably political, as long as athletes are there representing their country rather than participating as individuals.

16. And I do believe athletes should have the freedom to express their convictions and to protest against injustice, especially when these expressions of political conviction are in the name of recognising our common humanity.

17. But when the IOC has decided to ban BLM and LGBTQ — all of which aim at greater inclusion and mutual recognition — how can IOC fail to hold these China to the same standard, especially when the form of propaganda they brazenly displayed terror, intimidation, and death?

18. The two Chinese athletes, Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi, have used the international stage afforded by the Olympics to engage in shameless political propaganda. They used the occasion of the awarding of their medals to commend the legacy of a tyrant.

19. They used this celebration of the wonder of human diversity to honour the memory of a murderous regime. What they did runs counter to the spirit of the Olympics, to say nothing of a commitment to a common humanity.

20. They should thus bear the full consequences of their deed and be disqualified from their gold medal winning event.

21. special thanks to my dear friends @BangXiao_ and @Sophiemcneill

without ur support and encouragement，i would not b able to publish it.

22. here is the Chinese version
别让奥运成为暴君的领奖台

abc.net.au/chinese/2021-0…

23. Petition to call ICO @iocmedia
to disqualify Chinese athletes, Bao Shanju & Zhong Tianshi from their gold medal for breaching Rule 50 by wearing Mao's pins.
The Olympics is no place to praise a tyrant 别让奥运成为暴君的领奖台 - Sign the Petition! chng.it/RF4qQs8Z