The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Year ...

and why do they remember. The testimonies of witnesses are significant because the magnitude of the historical event reaches beyond those witnesses to many more who perished in the event. This makes their testimonies ethical acts of remembrance bound by heavy moral responsibility. These testimonies include a demand for justice, and this demand for justice is a matter of not personal but collective interest.

It is much harder for perpetrators than victims to come forward. Outside of courts and truth commissions, the only likely motivation for individual perpetrators to confess their crimes publicly is their guilty conscience. When there are no legal repercussions, perpetrators may feel less frightened of reprisals and thus be more likely to confess, but for the same reason, justice is less likely to be delivered to their victims. Blogging on the Internet provides a convenient and somewhat anonymous way for Cultural Revolution perpetrators to confess and apologize. Books and articles containing perpetrators’ testimonies can also be found in China and Hong Kong. The perpetrators’ testimonies provide insight on historical events, offering different perspectives from those of victims, about matters such as who did what to whom and under what circumstances. Yet if a perpetrator’s confession is made only because there is no retribution, does the lack of retributive justice render the perpetrator’s confession meaningless to the victims and their loved ones? This is a difficult question to answer, but it raises a more important question: Does uncovering the truth outweigh pursuing justice, or does administering justice take precedence over unearthing the truth?

Debates on questions of this kind usually center on the work of truth commissions, such as the famous South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The fundamental aim of a truth commission is to create a formal platform or a courtlike environment where victims, perpetrators, and witnesses can give testimonies in order to reveal the violations of human rights. At the end of its investigative process, the truth commission hopes to give society reconciliation rather than punishment—the truth commission has no judicial power to deliver