Stone tablets and memorial archways displayed at a museum dedicated to the victims of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) in Shantou, South China's Guangdong Province have been covered by cement.



Several exhibition halls at the museum - located on Tashan Mountain in Shantou's Chenghai district - were adapted for other purposes, and all the stone tablets, memorial gateways and victims' tombs at the site were covered with cement, Hong Kong-based news site hkej.com reported Wednesday.



Peng Qi'an, founder of the museum and former vice mayor of Shantou, told the Global Times on Thursday that he had not entered the museum since its exhibits were covered.



"Since March, the materials [in the museum] had been covered by banners with core socialist values slogans. Then they were covered by cement, making them illegible," Peng told the Global Times.



When contacted by the Global Times for comment, an employee of the Chenghai district's publicity department said that she was unaware of the move. Shantou's publicity department was unable to be reached for comment as of press time.



A report published by Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper in May said signs showing the way to the museum had been covered with banners extolling the core socialist values and emblazoned with the Chinese national flag and the Party emblem.



A 20-meter-wide and 5-meter-high stone tablet in the museum's public square that was originally inscribed with the phrase "Take history as a mirror, do not let the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution repeat itself" had been replaced with enormous posters advocating the Chinese dream and core socialist values, the report added.



Peng began developing the site in the late 1990s, and construction of the museum was completed in 2005. The area is dotted with dozens of graves, memorial arches and marble memorials carved with passages from history texts that describe class struggle or violent deaths.



According to previous reports, it is allegedly China's only museum dedicated to the Cultural Revolution, and the local government neither supported nor opposed its construction.



Historians trace the start of the Cultural Revolution to May 16, 1966, when a conference of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) passed a circular in which Party leader Mao Zedong stated his belief that the power usurped by capitalist-roaders could be recaptured only by carrying out a great cultural revolution.



The notice marks the beginning of a decade-long campaign that some historians say threw China into an abyss of chaos and lawlessness.



According to a report published by political journal Yanhuang Chunqiu in 2007, during the Cultural Revolution in Shantou, roughly 100,000 people were implicated in criminal cases, more than 4,500 were injured or disabled and some 400 people died.



During the Sixth Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1981, the Cultural Revolution was completely negated and criticized as "a long, drawn-out and grave blunder."



People's Daily in May called the Cultural Revolution "a mistake ... that can not and will not be allowed to repeat itself."