The former Soviet K.G.B. official was convicted of persecuting dozens of people, nine of whom were condemned to death.
"This does not mean that the majority of gamekeepers kill birds of prey," said a spokesman, "but it does mean that the majority of people who are convicted of persecuting birds of prey are gamekeepers".
He was referring to the 1981 show trial in which Mao's wife and three other party leaders were convicted of persecuting hundreds of thousands during the Cultural Revolution.
But his support for students, women, minorities, and artists — what he called "the substratum of outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and the persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable" — was ahead of its time.
It's much harder to comprehend why this most critically feted – but, in his mind, persecuted – of performers often bars all media from his gigs, or at least denies reviewers tickets.
Today, all sorts of writers who seek to give witness are still persecuted, of course.
One law will be in the land for the persecuted of the entire world, whatever group: Armenian, Gypsy, Jew, homosexual, migrant, or a refugee from Rwanda, Cambodia, or Palestine.
If you are busy persecuting tens of millions of blacks you do not have much time left over for tens of thousands of Jews.
"America has a history of interning the Japanese, of persecuting people because of their religious beliefs.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, in Albania the church (and Islam, too) was persecuted out of existence after 1967.
