Excerpt From a Telegram to All Military Areas of the People's Republic of China (28th of February, 1951)

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Excerpt From a Telegram to All Military Areas of the People's Republic of China has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Comment on Suppressing and Liquidating Counter-Revolutionaries, in The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949-76, First English Edition, Vol. 1, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk and London, 1986.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is an excerpt from a telegram from Comrade Mao Zedong forwarding a report by the South-Western Military Area Party Committee on the Movement to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries to all military areas of the People's Republic of China dated the 28th of February, 1951. It was first published in the Red Guard collection Long Live Mao Zedong's Thought! in 1968.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#EXCERPT FROM A TELEGRAM TO ALL MILITARY AREAS OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

#Mao Zedong

#28th of February, 1951

#★

In saying that «unwilling followers will not be prosecuted», we refer to those who were coerced into participating in wrongdoing, but who themselves did not commit any wrongdoing or any serious wrongdoing. As for those against whom there is evidence of their abetting a crime, they are accomplices and should be sentenced. If the main culprit is given capital punishment, the accomplices should at least be given prison sentences, and some accomplices who committed serious crimes should be sentenced to death; they are not included in the category of «unwilling followers who will not be prosecuted».