Boxun has learned that 81-year-old-writer Tie Liu, famous as a “rightist” (see definition at end of story), has been arrested by the Beijing Public Security Bureau on suspicion of illegal business activity and causing a disturbance.

At 1 a.m. on September 14, 2014, police removed Tie Liu from his home. By noon, he had been jailed on suspicion of creating a disturbance. The charge of illegal business activity was added later.

On Monday, October 20, attorney Liu Xiaoyuan met with him. Tie Liu told the attorney that the so-called illegal business activity was publishing his own book “Past Small Scars.” This was a collection of articles by old rightists and was distributed for free. He mostly paid for it himself, with a small portion donated by other old rightists. He made no profit. The “disturbance” he supposedly created was writing a book that criticized Mao’s first chosen heir, Liu Shaoqi.

Attorney Liu said that Tie Liu’s housekeeper, Huang Jing, was also arrested Sept. 14  on suspicion of illegal business activity. She was not accused of creating a disturbance.

(Copy editor’s note: “Rightist” was a term used in the late 1950s to refer to intellectuals who raised questions about Communist Party policies such as collectivization of farms. They suffered great persecution during the Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957 and the Hundred Flowers campaign, in which people were first encouraged to speak up about the party’s shortcomings, then labeled as “poisonous weeds” and punished when they did.

Liu Shaoqi was the second-most powerful person in China under Mao Se Tung. He was purged from office during the Cultural Revolution after Mao labeled him a rightist, and died in 1969 while imprisoned.

In China, rightists would be considered liberals. Leftists are conservative, orthodox Communists.)