First- and second-grade students sit in a classroom at the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Neb. Researchers are now trying to locate the bodies of more than 80 Native American children buried near the school. National Archives/AP
Few US presidents have formally apologized to Americans for the “sins” of previous administrations.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford apologized for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII. After Japan bombed the US Naval base in Pearl Harbor, the US government viewed Japanese-Americans as a threat to national security. From 1942 to 1945, authorities imprisoned around 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Ford saw this mass incarceration as a “setback to fundamental American principles.” President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1988 that compensated every individual imprisoned.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized for the horrific Tuskegee Experiment, which occurred between 1932 and 1972. The United States Public Health Service intended to study syphilis and recruited poor Black sharecroppers under the pretense of providing free medical care for “bad blood.” However, the Public Health Service’s actual goal was to monitor the full progression of the disease. Instead of providing effective care, the researchers gave the participants placebos, allowing them to analyze how the untreated condition led to other severe health problems, ultimately resulting in each sharecropper’s death.
Last month, President Joe Biden apologized for the United States government’s role in running Native American boarding schools.
From 1819 to 1970, hundreds of boarding schools operated to assimilate Native American children, or “civilize the savages.” The federal boarding school system separated these children from their families, gave them Anglicized names, and prohibited them from speaking their tribal language or following their religion. Over 900 Native American children died as a result of physical and emotional abuse inside these boarding schools.
Academics argue that these presidential apologies mark the beginning of a long-overdue process of reconciliation between harmed citizens and the government that wronged them. Outside the academic community, critics contend that these apologies have no practical impact and are therefore insignificant.
These presidential apologies aren’t insignificant, because they reveal the difference between the US government and regimes such as China.
In 1966, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, initiated a decade-long cultural revolution in the People’s Republic of China. The Cultural Revolution aimed to purge Chinese society of capitalists and traditions that were counterproductive to the future of China.
When the Cultural Revolution began, it quickly became known by another name—the “Red Terror.” Zedong condemned people based on their social status and political identity and ordered the Red Guards to eradicate the five “bourgeois elements.” 1. Landlords 2. Wealthy farmers 3. Counter-revolutionaries. 4. Intellectuals or bad influencers 5. Right-wingers.
Over one million people are thought to have died during the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution as a result of execution, persecution, extreme humiliation, factional warfare, and harsh prison conditions. The Red Guard also rounded up and forced those who didn’t support Mao Zedong’s ideology into re-education camps, where they would learn the ideology of the Cultural Revolution.
In 1981, the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China admitted that enormous mistakes were made during the Cultural Revolution. The party did not explain the faults or express regret. Following this declaration, the party officially barred anybody from mentioning the Cultural Revolution, presumably with the intention of instilling a sense of collective amnesia.
In 2014, The Diplomat published a story about a remorseful former Red Guard member who apologized for participating in the murder of a school teacher and the controversy it stirred. However, “China’s propaganda authorities” quickly “squashed” the controversy. The Diplomat asserted that since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China’s authorities have whitewashed, muzzled, muted, and censored conversations about this period.
The China Digital Times obtained a memo from the State Council Information Office declaring that the official gag rule on all aspects of the Cultural Revolution will endure. According to The Diplomat, the Chinese Communist Party and media attempted to portray the Cultural Revolution as a transparent topic, but this was far from the truth. Books and confessions from that era are widely available, but news outlets typically discourage discussing the Cultural Revolution, and themes like Mao Zedong’s exact rule and the Chinese Communist Party’s accountability are carefully regulated or banned.
Advocates of official apologies argue that they go beyond seeking atonement for past atrocities. Advocates believe government apologies demonstrate changed values and give hope that the government will not commit the same human rights violations in the future.
The United States has not repeated the atrocities for which it has apologized, but what is the result of China’s collective silence on the Cultural Revolution?
In 2018, the Associated Press reported that “Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese—and even foreign citizens—in mass internment camps.” The detention effort has spread throughout Xinjiang, a territory half the size of India.
China’s actions resulted in the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world.
Chinese authorities defended their actions, claiming that radical Muslims had killed hundreds of people over the years and that the region poses a threat to peace and security. However, other accounts suggest that these internment camps are identical to the re-education camps used during the Cultural Revolution. According to the Associated Press, Chinese authorities believe that “ideological changes” are necessary to combat Islamic extremism. Apparently, these camps seek to rewire captives’ political thinking, remove their Islamic values, and reshape their identities.
During 2018, the camps grew significantly, with little judicial oversight or legal papers. Today the Chinese authorities claim to have closed the internment camps, but it appears they have converted them into high-security jails.
As previously said, government apologies aren’t insignificant. They reveal a major difference between governments that apologize and vow not to repeat past mistakes and regimes that refuse to apologize and repeat the horrors of their past with no remorse.
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