Wake up（67）

 

67

 

During the Great Famine, He Jiafu will never forget the painful memory before and after the Xinyang incident. Although He Jiafu's old comrade-in-arms Chai Jianhua escaped the disaster and went to Hong Kong after leaving Xinyang, he kept getting some news about Xinyang.

The flight of people will inevitably lead to the spread of news of a large number of dead people. So the Xinyang Prefectural Party Committee instructed all counties and cities to set up guards to intercept them and prevent them from fleeing. The villagers set up checkpoints at the intersections, strictly controlled the crossings of the Huaihe River, and intercepted fleeing people. They also set up special shelters and prisons to arrest fugitives at will. Killed in prison. However, there were still a very small number of people who risked their lives across the Huaihe River and fled to Linquan and Funan in Anhui. The local government also heard more or less about the tragic situation on the other side of the river, so they did not repatriate them immediately. After the incident, these people returned to their hometowns, but they had already changed.

At the same time, Lu Xianwen, secretary of the prefectural party committee, claimed: "It's not that there is no food, but that there is a lot of food. Ninety percent of the people are because of ideological problems." In November 1959, when he was driving from Huangchuan County, When I returned to the prefectural committee, I saw dead bodies on the side of the road, people blocking cars for food, and children abandoned by their parents along the way. He continued to ask the regional public security department to "eliminate the outflow of people within a time limit"; instructed the cadres and militias of the communes and brigades to seal off the villages; asked urban agencies, factories, and business units not to admit people from rural areas; There isn't a bum in the road," and so on.

Since then, members of the Standing Committee of the Xinyang County Party Committee have been divided into groups and arranged separately. The four gates of the county are guarded with guns, guards are set up on the main roads, patrols are patrolled along the borders of the county, and incoming and outgoing letters are inspected. Hu Xiuyu, deputy secretary of the County Supervisory Committee, wrote two anonymous letters to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to reflect the situation of people starving to death. Both letters were transferred to the Xinyang County Party Committee. During this period, a total of 12,000 letters were seized, and other senders who were found were brutally criticized.

Many years later, Chai Jianhua told He Jiafu some news from Hong Kong:

Although the authorities have tightly sealed the information, some information still reached Beijing one after another. At the beginning of 1959, 74 of the 78 dining halls of the Temple Watching Group and the Wangqiao Group of the Yuemei Commune in Shangcheng County had no food for more than two months, and more than a hundred people died of starvation. Xu Xuefu, a soldier and Communist Party member who lives in Linwan Company, Guanmiao Group, Yuemei Management District, Shangcheng County, went back to his hometown to visit his relatives and witnessed the tragedy in his hometown. He reported the situation to Deputy Commissioner Liu of the Xinyang Commissioner three times, and was severely criticized by Deputy Commissioner Liu and other leaders. and threats. On March 5 and 9, Xu Xuefu went to the county post office to send two urgent telegrams to Zhou Enlai, but was sent to the office of Wang Hanqing, the first secretary of the county party committee. Wang Hanqing was furious, saying that Xu Xuefu was "rightist thinking, rightist speech", and instructed to "detain Xu Xuefu immediately, find out the background, and arrest Xu Xuefu". The post office sent the telegram.

After the State Council received the telegram, Premier Zhou Enlai instructed the State Council, and Yang Fangzhi, Deputy Secretary-General of the State Council, instructed: "Please investigate and report to the People's Committee of Henan Province."

On March 28, the People's Committee of Henan Province replied: "The province is aware of the food situation in the whole province, and has taken a series of measures." "The province does not know about the food problem in Shangcheng, and will immediately report it to Shangcheng County for investigation. "

On March 31, the General Office of the People’s Committee of Henan Province sent a second call to the Office of the Secretary of the State Council regarding the feedback from the Xinyang area: “The food problem in the shopping mall has been resolved. Since last winter, several people have died due to old age and illness, and no one died of starvation. .Because the ideological problem has not been completely resolved, some people still have opinions. The special area has sent people to the place to understand and deal with it.”

In response to the calls from the State Council, the provincial, prefectural, and county committees tried their best to conceal or downplay the seriousness of the death of people starving to death in the mall, and even believed that reporting the problem to the superiors was due to incomplete resolution of the ideological problem. On April 2, the eve of State Department investigators arriving in Xinyang, the Xinyang Prefectural Committee wrote the "Notice on the Death of the Temple Visiting Group of the Yuemei Commune in the Mall due to poor living arrangements", acknowledging that what Xu Xuefu said was basically true, and checked the occurrence of The reason for this situation is that on the one hand, excessive food was collected, and on the other hand, grassroots cadres were afraid of being labeled as rightists and did not dare to report the real situation of food shortage.

In February 1960, the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent a director to Xinyang to inspect the disaster situation. Zhang Shufan, who was suspended, was reinstated and accompanied him to Xixian County and Huaibin to inspect the disaster situation. Wherever he went, there were mourners everywhere, and his eyes were bleak, and many villages were uninhabited. The director asked Zhang Shufan if the disaster was serious and whether there were any dead people. Zhang Shufan replied that there were, and there should be many. Just because I have been criticized since September 1959 and I don't know the situation in the whole region, it is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 people died of starvation. The director felt that the situation was serious and immediately went to Beijing to report.

At the same time, the Ministry of Health also received a telegram jointly sent by the Henan Gushi County Party Committee and the provincial medical team, about the illness and disaster in Gushi County that had killed more than 50,000 people.

After hearing the report, the leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs immediately reported to Xi Zhongxun, Secretary-General of the State Council, and Xi Zhongxun then reported to Dong Biwu, Secretary of the Central Supervisory Committee. At this time, the Ministry of Health also forwarded the telegrams from the Gushi County Party Committee and the Provincial Medical Team to the Central Supervisory Committee, and the Xinyang incident was initially revealed.

In April, Wu Zhipu said to Lu Xianwen, some people died in Xinyang, you should sum up your experience and lessons, write a report to the central government, and review it. Don't worry about it. Don't investigate. The investigation of the dead is not clear. The more you investigate, the more you investigate. Let the secretary of the county party committee estimate and report it.

In July, the Henan Provincial Party Committee held an enlarged meeting of the Xinyang Prefectural Party Committee in Jigongshan. Lu Xianwen made a review, and Ma Longshan, secretary of the Guangshan County Party Committee, was arrested and brought to justice to "account to the Central Committee."

At the same time, Dong Biwu sent Li Jian and Li Zhenghai to Xinyang to investigate, but the investigation was obstructed by the Henan provincial government. According to preliminary investigations, more than 700,000 people died of starvation. The investigation team returned to Beijing and reported to the main leaders of the Central Supervisory Committee and the Central Organization Department.

On October 21, 1960, four cadres from the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Central Supervisory Committee submitted an investigation material on a large number of starvation deaths and serious violations of law and discipline by cadres in Xinyang, Henan Province.

On the 24th, Li Fuchun presented it to Mao Zedong.

On the 26th, Lao Mao instructed: "Please Liu and Zhou will watch it today, and discuss how to deal with it in the afternoon."

An Ziwen, vice minister of the Central Organization Department, reported the situation to Zhou Enlai, and Wang Congwu, deputy secretary of the Central Supervisory Committee, submitted a written report on the Xinyang incident to Zhou Enlai.

On the 26th, at the meeting of the principal leaders of provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in the four regions of North China, Central South, Northeast, and Northwest China convened by Mao Zedong, “everyone was very shocked” after the head of the Henan Provincial Party Committee reported the Xinyang incident. Zhou Enlai then convened an emergency meeting of the State Council for discussion, and decided to set up a central working group, with Wang Congwu as the head, Xu Zirong, the vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security, and An Ziwen, the vice minister of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, as the deputy heads, and went to Xinyang for further investigation.

On November 6, the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting to listen to An Ziwen's report on the Henan issue. According to Tao Zhu, the first secretary of the Central South Bureau, about the situation learned by the working group: One-third of the province's areas have lost a large number of people and animals, the productivity has been greatly damaged, and the relationship between the party and the masses has been greatly damaged. Guangshan, Gushi, Huangchuan and other counties in the Xinyang area were devastated. Many villages in Huaidian Commune in Guangshan disappeared, and there were only more than 30 people left in a team of 90 people.

Time is always a curve, not a straight line, with no beginning and no end. Time can create miracles or witness disasters. The water flows in the east, and the leaves fall one after another. The era of the great famine has quietly and slowly disappeared.

After seeing the news from Chai Jianhua from Hong Kong, He Jiafu pondered it carefully, but felt helpless.

Time is passing quietly, the years are passing by in a hurry; time flies infinitely, the time will not repeat, and the memory will always become yesterday.