At his trial in Israel in 1961 Adolph Eichmann defended himself
as someone who "never did anything great or small,
without obtaining in advance express instructions from Adolf
Hitler or any of my superiors."
At her trial in China in 1981 Jiang Jing defended herself in the
same way, "I was Chairman Mao's dog. He told me who to bite
and I bit them."
Israel convicted Eichmann and China convicted Jiang but
Israel is a nation of laws and applies them indiscriminately;
China is a nation of orders which it issues at its whim.
"Following orders" is not a defense recognized in a society
ruled by laws; it is a defense in a society ruled by orders.
It is for this reason that those responsible for the murder of
Bian Zhongyun and of 3,000,000 others during the Cultural
Revolution go unpunished. When it wants to, as in the case of
the Gang of Four, China issues orders holding people
accountable. When it doesn't want to, it issues no such orders.
Wang Jinyao, Bian's husband, has found this out over the
years. Wang has tirelessly sought justice for his wife's murder.
Pausing here for a moment we note another distinction.
"Memorializing" and "justice" both are important, noble
concepts. There are two parties to a murder, the victim and the
murderer. Memorializing focuses exclusively on the victim:
when we lay wreaths on the graves of our loved ones we do so
regardless of whether they died by murder, accident, in
war, or by natural causes. Justice focuses on both victim and
murderer. When Wang Jinyao went to his country's authorities
it was not to memorialize Bian; he has done that in his
apartment since 1966. Wang sought justice, he wanted those
responsible for his wife's murder to be held accountable in
some way.
When Wang sought justice he was cited a Chinese "law" that
codified Adolph Eichmann's defense. Wang was told that since
Bian's murder had occurred in the midst of a "mass movement"
the requisite criminal intent could not be imputed to any
individual. Without criminal intent there is no crime. Without a
crime there is no criminal. Therefore, no one was responsible
for Bian's death. Such was the Chinese government's order.
Justice is not revenge, the two, like orders and laws and
memorializing and justice, are often conflated. Justice is the
product of the shared values of a society, those values are
embodied in its laws and a society's fairness, that is, its
legitimacy, depends on the enforcement of those laws, that is,
those values. Wang Jinyao received no justice from his country
for his wife's murder because, you see, his country has no
justice to give. This is Public Occurrences.
