China's Great Wall of Silence: The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun

China's Great Wall of Silence:

The Murderers of Bian Zhongyun

"Rumors"

During the Cultural Revolution when Chinese leaders wanted to dismiss the truth of a matter they would use one word recurrently: "rumors." For example, in 1966 when Lin Biao gave a note to each member of the Politburo dismissing Yan Weibing's letters impugning the chastity of Lin's wife (which unchasteness was widely known to be true) he wrote,

"Yan Weibing's counterrevolutionary letters contain nothing but rumors."

It's an interesting circumlocution. Not "lies" but rumors. A lie is a proven falsehood or a characterization that the user is willing to prove to be false. A rumor is a statement that appears to have some basis in fact but is not proven to be true or untrue. The basis for the factual assertion in a "rumor" is never established. Therefore the use of the word "rumor" instead of "lie" allows the author/speaker to dismiss the truth without explicitly denying it.

The same circumlocution is found in the words of some of those writing or speaking about the C.R. today.

Here is Yan Song in Morning Sun:

"I didn't take part in smashing the Four Olds or the house searches but rumors were everywhere."
.......

"Rumors about me reached the village before I arrived. Song Be Militant is coming to settle here, the one who burns, loots and rapes."
......

If my name [binbin] hadn't meant gentle Mao wouldn't have said better to be militant and then there wouldn't have been all these rumors."

And here is Dr. Weili Le in her article The Death Of Bian Zhongyun which as easily could be titled My Attempt to Exonerate My Friend and Fellow Former Red Guard Yan Song:

"As the Red Guards quickly acquired the reputation as tormentors of innocent people in the subsequent anti-four-olds campaign, rumors about Song killing numerous individuals began to circulate."
...

"During the Great Link-Up in the fall of 1966 my classmates and I saw a leaflet...which said that Song was responsible for a number of deaths...None of us believed such rumors then."

Of course the mere use of the word "rumors" is not evidence of anyone's guilt but it is suspicious verbiage made more suspicious by its linkage to the words used by CCP officials then. It also casts more doubt on the words of Yan and Dr. Weili. Listened to in their entirety Yan's statements on Morning Sun sound ludicrous. Read in its entirety Dr. Weili's defense of Yan and her entire article are gravely flawed as serious scholarship, made more so by all of these "rumors."

This is Public Occurrences.

Anyone with information on those responsible for the torture and murder of Bian Zhongyun please contact publocc@gmail.com.