Taiwan Today

The blood purge which has been going on in Communist China for many months is daily assuming a more and more brutal aspect. The Communists frankly admit that so far more than a million people have been put to death, but we have good reason to believe that the number is actually much greater than the figures announced by the Peiping regime. The victims of the blood purge are not confined to anyone class of people; they include not only those who actively or passively resist the Communist rule but also those who are regarded as likely to oppose the Communists in the future. In other words, people have been and are being sentenced to death not only for "crimes" they are alleged to have committed but for "crimes" which the Communists think they might commit. In the eyes of the Communists, the proof of criminality is not only the actual commission of a criminal act but also the intention to commit it. In most, if not all, cases of this kind, the alleged intention cannot be proved by any evidence, and is therefore subject to the whimsical interpretation of the Communists. And Communist laws—not always codified statutes but oftentimes arbitrary rulings based upon whims and caprices—are retroactive: anyone may be punished for something he did twenty or thirty years ago, long before the Communists came into power. The victims of the Communist purge arc usually charged with being "Kuomintang agents," "reactionaries," or "unreliable elements," all of which can be covered by the term "counter revolutionaries." Indeed, for being "counter revolutionaries" large numbers of landlords, merchants, students, teachers, journalists, Christians, capitalists, workers, and public functionaries and military officers who formerly served under the Nation­al Government have been made to face the firing squad. There are supposedly two motives behind this blood purge. The first is the Pei­ping regime's determination to strike terror into the hearts of the Chinese people so as to put an end to all opposition and thereby ensure the security of its position on the mainland. The second is to carry out, at the behest of the Kremlin, the policy of reducing China's population by one-fourth or even one half. This program of the Communists, if allowed to be brought to completion, will exceed in both its cruelty and its scope anything of a similar nature ever witnessed in the history of mankind. We believe, however, that the Chinese people will not permit the Commu­nists to carry out this diabolical scheme. We are confident that, in view of the rapidly unfolding international situation, the day cannot be far off when they will rise to a man to throw off the yoke their oppressors have im­posed on them. Before world public opinion Mao Tse-tung and his henchmen stand con­demned as fiendish tyrants and cold-blooded murderers. How much longer will those nations which have recognized the Peiping regime con­tinue to fraternize with the Chinese Commu­nists whose hands are dripping with the blood of millions of innocent people?