Yu Luoke

Dissident 1942–1970 ✕ Executed

Young Beijing worker executed for refuting the bloodline theory in “On Family Background”

Born in Beijing in 1942, he became one of the “black categories” when his parents were labelled rightists in 1957, and was refused university admission despite qualifying marks. He taught himself while working as a farm labourer, substitute teacher and factory apprentice. In the second half of 1966 he wrote “On Family Background”, arguing that the bloodline theory, “if the father is a hero the son is a real man”, trampled human rights; published in the Middle School Cultural Revolution Paper in January 1967, it caused a nationwide stir. In April Qi Benyu of the Cultural Revolution Group branded it a “big poisonous weed”. Arrested in January 1968, he was sentenced to death at a mass trial in the Beijing Workers’ Stadium on 5 March 1970, during the One Strike-Three Anti campaign, and executed at once. He was declared innocent in 1979.