Ruihua's Story

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Ruihua (Hua) was a teenager during Mao's Cultural Revolution when millions of people in China were tortured and killed for their political beliefs. 

Hua was sent off to a re-education camp for 10 years, where she was subjected to hard labor such as working in the fields. These photos show her dressed in a Communist uniform, which was intended “to cleanse someone's mind and get ride of the poisoning ideas from evil capitalism.”   In one image, she's holding the The Little Red Book, the nickname for the infamous book, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong." It  contains 267 aphorisms from the Communist Chinese leader, touching on issues such as class struggle.  Mao's most famous remark is, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".

Hua finally returned home from the camp at 27, suffering physical injuries from years of  heavy lifting. 

Resources: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34932800

https://victimsofcommunism.org/resources/