People-first principle points to proper path

I better understand the significance of the people-first principle after reading My Korean War A Prisoner of War's Memoir of 60 Years.

The writer Zhang Zeshi was detained in a prison camp for two years during the Korean War before he was sent back to China, where, to his surprise, he, along with more than 6,000 other returning prisoners, were politically persecuted. Being a returned prisoner of war was a stigma, which made it hard for him to get a job. Even his girlfriend was forced to leave him.

The question of whether being a prisoner of war meant he should be labeled a traitor weighed heavily on the mind of this writer, and many others who suffered the same fate, in the past decades.