Chinese Cultural Revolution expert Mr. Lu Li'an from Wuhan City, Hebei Province was reported missing on April 12, 2007. His family’s exhaustive searches have yet found him. Lu’s wife, Wang Fujun, sent an SOS to the outside world.
On April 16, during an interview with The Epoch Times , Wang stated that at around 6:00 a.m. on April 12, the 61-year-old Lu was doing his morning exercises at home. When his family checked in on him at 6:30 a.m., he was found missing. His wife searched for him everywhere, and reported the case to the Wan Song Yuan police station.
Wang frequently inquired the police station about her husband’s disappearance. On April 15, Wang discovered that a policeman had left the case report in his desk drawer and no work had been done on it. Wang, her family members, and friends are extremely anxious, and urge everyone to help search for Lu.
Lu was a student at the Wuhan Hanzhong Engineering College at the beginning of Cultural Revolution. He was imprisoned from 1968 to 1979 for “maliciously attacking Chairman Mao.” The authorities also accused him of participating in anti-revolutionary activities. Lu was almost sentenced to death, but received a long prison term instead.
During those 11 years, Lu suffered various inhumane tortures. Four individuals from a dozen of Lu’s colleagues charged in the same case were tortured to a point of mental collapse. Since Lu’s release from prison, he has been engaged in writing about the mistreatments he and other innocent people experienced during the Cultural Revolution. His memoir on the Cultural Revolution is considered “the living fossil of the Cultural Revolution.”
“The long-term detention in prison during the Cultural Revolution, followed by personally witnessing the maltreatment other victims received, has caused enormous trauma to his physical and mental health,” said Wang. “Even today, he still suffers from severe insomnia and depression. He has searched for medical treatments to cure these ailments, but nothing has worked. He suffers enormous pain every day. This January, he started taking medication for depression, but the medicine caused muscle pain. Sometimes the pain is so great that he writhes on the floor. He once told the doctor that he no longer wanted to live.”
Wang said the reason for Lu’s disappearance is unclear. She said, “Just prior to his disappearance, he was editing several book chapters that detailed the hardships suffered by innocent victims of the Cultural Revolution. Recently he told me several times, ‘I lived a very painful life. I really want to commit suicide, but I just can’t abandon you and my elderly mom.’ I told him to not think like that, and that we both were Christians, so we can’t commit suicide. I said to him, ‘You have survived the many years of torture in prison. You must be strong and continue medical treatment.’ He promised me he would.”
During the first few days Lu went missing, the family called his cell phone. It was picked up then hung up with no answer. Later the call would not go through. The family thinks the battery might have died. Wang said, “We have searched all the places we could think of, but there is no clue. Perhaps he wanted to find a peaceful place to be away from us.”
Lu’s memoir, Long Scream to the Sky: a red guard’s scream to heaven in prison –from a red guard who was singly detained for 11 years , is the product of 10 years of writing. The purpose of the memoir was to detail his experiences through the years, his imprisonment, and painful and profound thinking. Lu hoped it would enable more people to better understand the hardships suffered by the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution. The book was finally published by Hong Kong’s The Chinese University Press in September 2005.
