The Borneo Post

Hundreds attend funeral of Mao’s former secretary turned govt critic

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BEIJING: Hundreds of mourners paid their last respects to Mao’s former secretary Li Rui yesterday at a funeral that went against the final wishes of a man who became a bold critic of the ruling Communist Party.

Despite the dearth of public informatio­n on the time and place of the funeral, crowds lined up to see Li’s casket, which was draped under the red Communist hammer- and- sickle flag at the Baobashan Cemetery for revolution­ary heroes and party officials.

Bundled in dark- coloured winter coats with white flowers pinned on their lapels, many were gray-haired and in their seventies — just one generation younger than Li, who died Saturday at the age of 101.

“He is a good person,” one of Li’s relatives, who only shared his surname Gu, told AFP. “That is why so many people have come to send him off on this last journey.”

Inside the funeral parlour, Li’s body rested in a partially open casket.

Due to the large volume of mourners queueing to pay their respects, visitors were rushed into the room in small groups, where they bowed in front of Li’s casket and shook hands with his family members before being ushered out.

But Li wanted to be buried in his hometown in Hunan province and would have been against having the Communist flag at his funeral, according to his daughter, who boycotted the event.

“I believe that my father’s spirit is alive up in heaven, and definitely crying out and shouting as he looks down at the Li Rui covered by a party flag stained with the fresh blood of the people,” Li Nanyang, who lives in San Francisco, told AFP.

“As his daughter, I want to protect his personal dignity,” she said, adding that concerns about her personal safety in returning to China also factored into her decision to avoid the funeral.

“Li Rui is a person who had an independen­t mind under the ironclad rule of the Communist Party,” she said.

Despite Li’s position alongside China’s paramount leader in the mid-1950s, he quickly fell out with the Communist Party after criticisin­g the failures of Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy, which unleashed havoc and famine across the country.

Li was expelled from the party and spent eight years in prison during the Cultural Revolution, but he was rehabilita­ted in 1979. — AFP

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