[This issue of Peking Review is from massline.org. Massline.org has kindly given us permission to to place these documents on the MIA. We made only some formatting changes to make them congruent with our style sheets.]
[This letter is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #51, Dec. 16,
1966, p. 9. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
To Our Dear Motherland, Our Dear Party Central Committee
and Our Most Respected and Beloved Leader Chairman Mao:
Our best greetings to you! We 41 young overseas Chinese, who are unreasonably imprisoned in the Medan base headquarters in Indonesia, are writing a letter to you. We were unwarrantedly arrested by Indonesian Right-wing armymen for upholding the dignity and honour of our motherland and for defending the legal rights and interests of the overseas Chinese. As we struggle against the enemy, you represent the red sun in our hearts. Your works have given us inexhaustible strength, the daring to wage a face-to-face struggle against all monsters and ghosts till we completely defeat them! The enemy’s torture, intimidation and enticement have not for a moment made any of us waver in our patriotic stand and militant determination, because we have seen through the very essence of the enemy. Chairman Mao has taught us that: “All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful,” and in the course of our struggle we have come to a thorough understanding of the great wisdom and absolute correctness of this thesis. We went on a hunger strike for six days in defence of the dignity of the motherland and in protest against the fascist outrages of the Indonesian Right-wing militarymen. During this time, whenever we felt faint from lack of food and ached in every limb, it seemed to us as though Chairman Mao was at our side gently encouraging us: “Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.” These words inspire us and give us boundless strength. We braced ourselves, fully determined to carry the struggle to the very end!
Let the enemy beat and injure us and bloody our bodies all over, but they cannot shake our faith and our warm love for our motherland and Chairman Mao. Our motherland is our strongest support and Chairman Mao is the reddest sun in our hearts. When the struggle is most arduous, the thought of them fills us with confidence and helps us to go forward valiantly.
From the moment we were arrested, we have used Chairman Mao’s teachings to encourage each other. And through our struggles we have felt the matchless power of Mao Tse-tung’s thought. In the dark prison cells with the enemy patrolling outside, we have recited from memory quotations from Chairman Mao again and again. Although we are dungeoned in these terrible, bleak cells, the brilliant radiance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought illuminates our hearts.
We thank you, the people of the motherland, the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao, for your care and solicitude. Without fail, we shall put still greater effort into our study of Chairman Mao’s works, and will imprint Mao Tse-tung’s thought in our minds, infuse it in our blood and express it in our actions. Without fail, we shall emulate the proletarian revolutionary rebel spirit of the Red Guards—the vanguards of China’s great proletarian cultural revolution—their daring to think, to speak out, to act and to break through. Our struggle against the enemy is still going on. We pledge to Chairman Mao: We are determined to continue to take Mao Tse-tung’s thought as the weapon to win final victory in this international class struggle!
41 young overseas Chinese in Indonesia in prison
at the Medan base headquarters, Indonesia
November 16, 1966
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