f' OPINION Pa0e 4 Wednesday, December 3, 1980 The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Will China's Gang of Four trial end the revenge cycles? Vol. XCI, No.74 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, M1 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board I .. s res Go Ma tic! Ins SW( on Ev did Rel SA an( "m nou cle for to tivf pro car SAID victory encouraging TUDENTS HAVE GOOD reason more and better student represen- I to be optimistic in light of the tation in the administrative decision- ults of last week's LSA-Student making that will be crucial in the vernment elections. Sue Porter, coming year of University financial rgaret Talmers, and the entire restraints and budget cuts. We may ket of Students for Academic .and also expect progress toward improved titutional Development have been recruitment and retention of minority ept into the leading council positions students and a higher level of quality a tide of intelligent progressivism. among graduate teaching assistants at en Tim Lee, the presidential can- the University. ate for Student Alliance for Better LSA students have wisely rejected presentation who was buried in the the clouded vision of Tim.Lee and other ID landslide, conceded that Porter SABRE candidates in favor of the d the SAID victors have a clear driving commitment and clear goals of andate." the SAID ticket. In fact, every SAID With by far the heaviest voter tur- candidate received more votes than t in the history of LSA-SG and with any non-SAID candidate and the only ar student support for SAID's plat- persons denied seats on the council by m, we may hopefully look forward voters were SABRE candidates. the council becoming a truly effec- LSA students have lent their over- e vehicle for solving LSA student whelming support to the SAID can- )blems. didates and their platform. Now it is up With the SAID victory, LSA students to Porter and the other SAID victors to n anticipate a renewed drive for pick up the initiative and run with it. Physical re. "istance-an effective rape defense? By David Milton China's updated version of the notoriou Moscow purge trials is now taking place in Peking. But the Chinese are surpassing their Stalinist predecessors thanks to the miracle of television, which nightly broadcasts the tortured faces and barely audible confessions of the former political associates of China's revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong. Billed by the present Peking regime as a partially secret, partially public prosecution of criminals, the spectacle now being staged is clearly a drama of political vengeance. Recent foreign visitors to mainland China report that the trial of the Gang of Four-headed by Mao's widow, Jiang Qing, and a coterie ofyother past Chinese political leaders and military - comman- ders-represents a political super bowl staged to titillate or frighten millions-of spec- tators. REGARDLESS OF the politics and policies of the political faction which has won ii China, and those of the faction now in the dock, the key question is whether this public drama of forced confession will finally bring to an end the cycles of factional revenge that have shaped the politics of China over the past 20 years, or instead guarantee another cycle of retribution in the near future. The Deng Xiaoping regime now in power, despite its much-publicized legal code and its proclamation of a new reign of law for China, is proving in practice to be just as arbitrary in its application of justice as the regime it superceded. The difference between the present and past Peking administrations lies simply in the targets subject to illegal arrest: During the late 1960s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao turned the masses loose against the officials who ruled them. In the revolutionary disorder that ensued, many injustices were committed against of- ficials who remained unprotected by legal rules and procedures. CHINA'S NEW LEGAL code is designed to protect the traditional authority and sacrosanct power that Chinese leaders have enjoyed for thousands of years. The present show trial of the Maoist Gang of Four is the opening gun of a whole series of lower level trials that will soon sweep China in a massive purge of all those deemed "leftist" by the new party of order in Peking. Avenging Chinese officials, led by Deng, recently supervised the rewriting of the Chinese constitution. The populist provisions installed by Mao guaranteeing the right of the ordinary people to speak out freely, to air their views fully, to hold great debates and write political posters, have been removed, as has the clause, insisted on by Mao, that the workers have the legal right to strike. The Maoist belief in the occasional benefit of disorder has been replaced by Deng's demand for unity and discipline. One yearsafter China's new legal code was heralded as the new rule of law throughout the country, thousands of political prisoners are now being held without charge or trial. THE FAMOUS Democracy Wall in Peking has been turned into a giant billboard for commercial advertising, and today any citizen who dares to post his or her criticism of powerholders risks imprisonment. At least 6,000 young people in Peking alone are reported to have been sent to reformist labor camps since the new legal code came in- to effect. Crackdowns by the Deng regime on THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL Lights! Camera! Action! Bring on the guilty parties!' 4 4 IN RECENT YEARS; more and more attention has been given to the issue of rape-how to prevent it and how to deal with it should an attack oc- cur. The feminist movement.has had a lot to do with bringing the issue out in the open, and it has made some impor- tant strides in combatting the problem. Women used to be afraid to report the crime for fear of being insensitively treated by the police. Now, public and, private agencies-including the Ann Arbor's own Women's Crisis Cen- ter-have sprung up that offer help to rape victims from specially trained female counselors. At the behest of angry women's groups, some of the laws that used to make it difficult to get a rape convic- tion have been changed. A woman no longer has to worry quite as much about being made a victim a second time by a defense attorney in a cour- troom. Yet one aspect of the rape problem remains by and large the same as it has always been, namely, the "com- mon wisdom" about how a woman should react to a would-be rapist on the spot. The advice generated by most media and law enforcement sources has long been not to fight the rapist. The logic is that the attacker would probably get what he's after anyway, so it is foolish to risk any further injury by attempting to avoid the rape. When methods of resistance are suggested, they are usually the sort least likely . to infuriate the rapist-trying submissively to talk him out of it, pleading for mercy, or doing something disgusting to dissuade the would-be felon from his goal. (One California pamphlet went so far as to suggest that women induce themselves to vomit to repulse an attacker.) The "common wisdom" received some scrutiny recently in two studies commissioned by the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape. Researchers studied the out- comes of hundreds of rapes and attem- pted rapes and discovered that physical resistance is more likely to fend off an attacker than the older, more passive methods. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any solid evidence that a woman who resists an attacker's advances is more likely to get seriously hurt than a more docile victim. The matter certainly merits more study, but if the Center's findings are borne out, the case would seem to be very strong for women to learn self- defense techniques that would help them minimize their chances of being hurt while maximizing their chances of escaping a rapist. As the number of women who can defend themselves against attackers increases, the num- ber that {might have to could well plummet. youthful dissidence in a country in which half of the one billion population is under the age of 21 do not augur well for the future stability of the nation. China's most famous young dissident, Wei Jingsheng, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for suggesting that aside from Deng's four modernizations of agriculture,, industry, science, and national defense, a fifth moder- nization should be added-democracy. BOTH THE DEFENDANTS in the Gang of Four show trial and youthful Chinese dissidents have been jailed under a recently enacted proviso which states that all those prisoners detained before January 1, 1980 are not entitled to the protection of the new legal code. Future arrests will, no doubt, be covered by new, hastily drafted provisos. A recent editorial in the Communist Party journal, the People's Daily, makes it clear that China will not follow the path of democracy, but will ruthlessly enforce proletarian dictatorship, party rule, and rigid censorship under the guise of the protection of state secrets. A new law threatens a jail sentence to any citizen who discloses information covered by 17 categories of state secrets. These include, aside from national security and inter- national relations, a broad range of economic affairs, the national budget, scientific in- novations and discoveries, culture, education, and even medical and health matters. WHILE THE GANG of Four and the other defendants now facing death sentences before a world television audience certainly abused the prerogatives of power during their own reign, the signs of a new order of freedom and democracy in China are not in sight. The old Chinese elites are back in power. They live behind the big walls of their luxurious com- pounds from which they are chauffeured to work, sheltered from public view by the silk curtains that cover the windows of their Red Flag limousines. Topparty officials know which strings to pull to get their children into Peking Univer- sity, Harvard, and MIT. Chinese workers remain only one step behind their Polish counterparts in the recognition that the privileged party cadres are simply the "Red Bourgeoise." Meanwhile, thousands of ragged petitioners from the provinces besiege Peking and China's other main cities to present their grievances to an indifferent bureaucracy. If) the mounting dissatisfaction of millions of or- dinary Chinese is met by the new party order with more purges, contempt, or even benign neglect, then the cycle of revenge that has become a hallmark of Chinese politics in recent decades could erupt once more. As if to punctuate that possibility, a few days before the opening of the current show trial, a bomb explosion ripped through Peking's main railroad station, killing nine and injuring 81. This act of political'terrorism suggests that a continuing politics of revenge by China's aging rulers may not produce the stability and consensus that the world's most populous nation so desperately needs. David Milton is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon- Eugene and taught at Peking's First Foreign Language Institute from 1964 to 1969. He wrote this article for the Pacific News Service. 4 -. LETTERS TO THE DAILY: 4 Blame Israelfor Palestinians' woes RE v9FENSE. 1 pw 9w' 'KOS To the Daily: I am compelled to comment on David Brief's letter of November 21, in which he attempts to lay the blame for the Palestinian problem on the other Arab coun- tries. In a country where the Jewish lobby is so strong it is amazingly difficult to learn objective infor- mation on the situation through the media. I would like to enlighten your readers on a point or two. First of all, the "Palestinians" (why the quotation marks, David?) have never wanted war. How many of them do you think appreciate second-class citizen- ship in an area that they have oc- cupied for generations, without control of even a basic need like their own drinking water? The problem began with the formation of the state of Israel. For years, the Jews and the Arabs lived together peacefully, until the British mandate ended with the birth of a new state and the displacement of thousands of Palestinians. And for victims of oppression, it's hard to under- stand how the Israelis could treat other human beings the same terrible way they were treated, until you hear a quote an Israeli spokesman used as justification when asked the same question: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." Secondly, David Brief is correct in stating that there was a Palestinian state. But how can you consider Jordan a Palestinian state when you your- self state that other Arab coun- tries, Jordan included, have chosen to use the Palestinians as "political weapons"? Not to men- tion the fact that the Palestinians do not want Jordan as a homeland. They have occupied what is now called Israel for generations, since Biblical times, and have as much, or more right, to normal lives there under their own leadership (though the Israelis have seen to it that any potential leaders are silenced one way or another). Which leads to another question-if the Israelis wanted a state in 1948, why didn't they take Jordan? No other country in the world took in the homeless Jewish population after WWII except Palestine, and the Palestinians were victimized for not agreeing to live under the government of those whom they -took in. Thirdly, it's sad to hear that Mr. Brief knows so little about 4- -6-, nac nr,rith families with young children-one of which was my mother's). The first terrorists were the Haganah and the Stern Gang, of which Menachem Begin was a leader. If the Palestinians use terrorist tactics, they got the idea from the Israelis. The Palestine Liberation Organization wasn't even established until 1964, while the' Israeli terrorist groups ran around in the '40s and '50s. The. Israelis may want peace-especially in light of the fact that most of the world now recognizes the Palestinians' right to autonomy-but in dealing with Egypt (another country which has used the Palestinians as a means of furthering its own ambition) they are missing the point. When you are confronting an entire people's right to exist independently, you deal with members of that population, not outsiders. But there seems to be little chance-of this if the Israelis Radioactive nightmare oorm o. .C.IF To the Daily: T .nm ...-3, enn...npd nmi creating disasters with patience and foresight rather than have to I. I