Thread by @WilliamYang120

Regarding the controversy extending from the #China cyclists wearing badges of Mao Zedong, @badiucao wrote an opinion piece for @abcnews, explaining why the Olympics is not a place for such an act. abc.net.au/religion/the-o…

"When I saw the badges of Mao, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. I was not expecting this reminder of China’s history and of the suffering endured by my family.

To the athletes, the badges might represent little more than a cultural-revolution-themed style of devotion for Beijing;

but 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, 45 years after the Chairman’s death."

"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."

"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."

"He died there, far away from home, due to the lack of food and disease in less than a year.

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. My father was only four-years-old at the time.

He was called “the son of a dog”, a humiliating name for children of “anti-revolutionary criminals”, from the beginning of his dark childhood."

"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 a kind of nationalist fervour and has praised communist ideology throughout the one-hundredth anniversary of the CCP."

"At the same time, egregious human rights crises, like Xinjiang’s concentration camps and the crackdown on the democratic movement in Hong Kong, have emerged under his watch."

"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."