Struggle sessions (Chinese: 批斗大会; pinyin: pīdòu dàhuì), or denunciation rallies or struggle meetings, [3] were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being "class enemies" were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured, sometimes to death, often by people with whom they were close. [4] [5] [6] [3] …

Jan 25, 2021 · Much murderous insanity erupted after 1966, but the Cultural Revolution’s most iconic images remain those of the struggle sessions: victims with bowed heads in dunce caps, the outlandish ...

Struggle sessions often involved brutal tactics, including physical violence, public shaming, and psychological intimidation, leading to severe mental and emotional trauma for the victims. Participants in struggle sessions were often coerced into denouncing their friends, family members, or colleagues, which created an atmosphere of distrust ...

Jun 24, 2016 · Those arrested were forced to endure brutal “struggle sessions,” where they were tortured and humiliated in public. By the time the revolution ended in 1976, possibly as many as three million people had been killed. ... Victims were variously shot, decapitated, buried alive, and in some instances, blown up with explosives. The violence got ...

May 6, 2023 · For most of her life, Wang Youqin has strived to document victims of the Cultural Revolution, telling their stories without sentimentality or — in many cases, when the victims were also perpetrators of violence — remorse. ... Lao She also celebrated the sort of “struggle sessions” that would be later used against him. She wonders, as ...

Oct 17, 2022 · The “struggle session” is a feature of totalitarianism widely practiced during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976.) It is a public exercise in ritual humiliation that ...

In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit to various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until he or she confessed. During Mao's rule, the Chinese people were forced to attend many different types of struggle sessions, sometimes consisting of 100,000 people.

Lately, the term "struggle session" has come to be applied to any scene where victims are publicly badgered to confess imaginary crimes under the pretext of self-criticism and rehabilitation. Disuse after 1978. Struggle sessions were disowned in China after 1978, when the reformers led by Deng Xiaoping took power. Deng Xiaoping prohibited ...

May 16, 2016 · Struggle sessions, when people were accused of political crimes, publicly humiliated and subject to verbal and physical abuse by a crowd, were a frequent occurrence during the Cultural Revolution.

May 15, 2016 · At the height of the movement in 1968, people were publicly beaten to death every day during struggle sessions; others who had been persecuted threw themselves off tall buildings.