Chinese human rights activist Dr. Xu Zhiyong, twice imprisoned for his longstanding advocacy of civil society in China, was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the Chinese government in April 2023. The documentary by independent director Lao Hu Miao was filmed over a four-year period, beginning with the seizure of the Public League Legal Research Center, which Xu Zhiyong helped found in 2009, and ending with Xu's first prison sentence in 2014.
How many people were "killed," "imprisoned," and "controlled" in the whole "anti-revolution" campaign? Mao Zedong later said that 700,000 people were killed, 1.2 million were imprisoned, and 1.2 million were put under control. Mao's statement was naturally based on a report made in January 1954 by Xu Zirong, deputy minister of public security. Xu reported at the time that since the anti-revolution campaign, the country had arrested more than 262,000, of which "more than 712,000 counter-revolutionaries were killed, more than 12,900,000 were imprisoned, and 1,200,000 were put under control, and more than 380,000 were released through education because their crimes were not considered serious after their arrest." (3) Taking the figure of 712,000 executed, it already amounts to one and two-fourths thousandths of one percent of the country's 500 million people at that time. This figure is obviously much higher than the one-thousandth of a percent level originally envisioned by Mao Zedong.
The revised edition of this book was published by *Open Magazine* in Hong Kong in 2007. The first edition was published in 1991 and was revised and reprinted twice, in 1993 and 1995. The book collects a large amount of information about the anti-rightist movement, including survey interviews with victims of the anti-rightist movement and their relatives and friends. It is a complete record of the anti-rightist movement, which comprehensively analyzes and discusses the whole process of the anti-rightist movement, as well as its ins and outs, causes and consequences. Regarding the number of "rightists," the statistics of the CCP authorities had been limited to 550,000 people. According to Ding Lyric's analysis, there were about 1.2 million people who were labeled as "rightists" in the Anti-Rightist Movement.
NEWS STAND is a special issue of Hong Kong’s Stand News. Featuring selections of reporting and photography on Hong Kong's 2019 social movement, NEWS STAND presents readers with a first-hand account of Hong Kong’s history.
Established on December 30, 2014, Stand News ceased operations on December 29, 2021, after Hong Kong’s National Security Police raided the publication’s headquarters.
The Hong Kong Police charged Stand News, along with its top editors and board members, with “conspiracy to publish seditious publications” under sections 9 and 10 of the Crimes Ordinance for publishing a number of seditious articles. The preface of NEWS STAND was also used by the prosecution as evidence in court.
On December 30, 2021, former Editor-in-Chief Chung Pui-kuen and former Acting Editor-in-Chief Patrick Lam Shiu-tung were refused bail and remanded in custody.
The trial against Stand News began in October 2022 and lasted 57 days, with the verdict adjourned three times, resulting in a judgment on August 29, 2024, a span of 33 months from indictment to verdict.
Judge Kwok Wai-kin found Chung, Lam, and Stand News’ parent company guilty of criminal intent, finding that the political philosophy of Stand News was nativist and that it was “intended to incite hatred of the Chinese central government or the Hong Kong government and hatred of the judiciary.” Of the 17 articles presented by the prosecution, 11 were found by the judge to have inciting intent; Chung and Lam were respectively sentenced to 21 months and 11 months in prison.
