Chapter 42 1. Reduce sentence

In March 1975, I returned from the Taiyuan Public Security Hospital to the No. 1 Prison of Shanxi Province in Qi County.In the evening, the team leader sent me a sentence commutation verdict. The Shanxi Provincial Higher People's Court ruled that the original sentence of life imprisonment was changed to 15 years in prison.For a man in prison, that's certainly a happy thing to do. The range of sentence reduction in prison is generally reduced from life imprisonment to fixed-term imprisonment of 20 years (this is the statutory maximum number of years of fixed-term imprisonment).There are not many people who have been reduced from life imprisonment to fixed-term imprisonment of 15 years.Why can I get such a large sentence reduction at one time?I have no idea.I just want to talk about my attitude in prison.Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, I sat in the prison of the Kuomintang twice, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, I sat in the prison of the Communist Party.Should I treat Communist Party prisons the same way I would treat Kuomintang prisons?This was the first question I considered after I was sentenced to prison.The KMT's prison is the enemy's prison, and destroying the enemy's prison is one of the tasks of revolutionary workers.Therefore, Communist Party members are locked in enemy prisons, and they should have a destructive attitude towards prisons.For example, carrying out hunger strike requires improving life, developing secret organizations, instigating prisoners to make trouble and escape... and even launching all prisoners to escape from prison and riot.Communist prisons are part of a socialist society.If the order of the Communist Party's prison is destroyed, the order of the socialist society is also destroyed.Therefore, even if a Communist Party member is imprisoned in a Communist Party prison due to an unjust case, he should maintain an attitude towards prison order.For example, take the lead in observing prison rules and disciplines, help illiterate prisoners learn culture and complete production tasks, etc.For a member of the Communist Party, he must stand the test if he is in the enemy's prison, and he must be able to stand the test if he is in the prison of the Communist Party.

The judgment judged me as "historical plus current counter-revolutionary", that was the judge's mistake.There are many reasons for this error, and it is also difficult to implement the law fairly under the situation that "movement overwhelms everything".For example, during the "Cultural Revolution", some of the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries in our party were inevitably "prisoned", which illustrates this point.No matter how the error in the judgment was caused, the error is still an error.Practice is the criterion for testing truth.According to my revolutionary practice, I firmly believe that I am a member of the Communist Party who is loyal to the party;In the past I was able to withstand the test of the Kuomintang prison, and today I will also be able to withstand the test of the Communist Party prison.So I decided to take a maintenance attitude towards prison order.

For those who are imprisoned, the first test is to "admit guilt and obey the law", which is not easy to pass.Some people who have discrepancies between the verdict and the facts often fail to figure it out and adopt negative attitudes and wrong practices: such as passively slowing down work, spreading dissatisfaction, breaking prison rules and discipline, and even escaping from prison and other illegal actions; the result is confinement or additional punishment .I'm an innocent man serving a life sentence.It seems that it is very difficult for me to pass the test of "confessing guilt and obeying the law", but I have passed this test in accordance with the law.The party's policy is "never let a bad person go; never wrong a good person."National law stipulates that if the judgment does not match the facts, the parties may appeal to the People's Procuratorate or a higher court.In accordance with the Party's policies and national laws, I filed complaints with the government many times, stating the facts in detail, and once I wrote 120,000 words.I have stated many times in my appeal: If the government finds out the facts, I will absolutely obey the ruling.In this way, the "confession and submission to the law" is not a matter of self-examination.I take the lead in maintaining surveillance discipline, and I overfulfill production tasks every month; I take the initiative to help detainees study "Selected Works of Mao Zedong" and culture; I also help them write learning experiences and letters home.I also insist on studying revolutionary literature every day. For example, I not only read through and intensively the first to fourth volumes of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong", but I can also recite "On Practice", "On Contradiction", "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship", "On Literature and Art in Yan'an", etc. Speeches at the Symposium" and other dozens of Chairman Mao's works, "Chairman Mao's Poems" and "Chairman Mao's Quotations".I have read through "Selected Works of Marx and Engels" and other works.While staying in the hospital in Taiyuan, I also insisted on writing an article on learning experience every quarter and sending it to the squadron instructor where I was in the No. 1 Prison.I think the above may be the reason why I got a substantial reduction in sentence.