Challenge to NZ Maoists

These photographs symbolise an urgent question that faces the New Zealand supporters of Maoism, such [unclear: as the] editor of Salient. Will they [unclear: cor e] to uncritically accept whatever the Chinese leadership says as the absolute truth? Or will they learn from this most recent example of an official cover-up?

While I hope that the New Zealand Maoists balance their support for China with criticism of the repressive bureaucracy there, I cannot be optimistic that they will do do so. They still seem to be dedicated to following every word of whoever's number one in Peking. For example, the Salient editor applauds the alteration of the photographs as "a cultural purge". In Salient this year the Young Socialists have been denied article space, while the newspaper is laden with Maoist-tinged items and slanders against the Young Socialists. In their own small way, they set about falsifying history to serve their own narrow ends: in one issue of Salient they printed a letter ascribed to me which the editor knew that I had not written (Salients 27 March and 4 April 1977).

In New Zealand more and more people are questioning the New Zealand government's secrecy and hiding of facts; freedom of information is seen as a basic right which is denied us. It is all the more horrifying to see a government of a post-capitalist country using the same practices. This latest example should be opposed strongly. If we do not speak out against such distortions we are helping the Chinese bureaucracy lie to the Chinese people, who were the real motive force of the great Chinese revolution.