Tokyo yesterday said it has complained to the UN over Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s plan to attend a military parade in Beijing to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called on the UN to be “neutral,” as Tokyo issued a complaint to the 193-member body on Friday.
“We want to encourage member countries to look to the future and not to unnecessarily focus on particular events in the past,” Suga told a media briefing yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
The parade planned for Thursday, a show of strength which comes as China takes a more assertive stance regionally, is to see 12,000 soldiers and 500 pieces of hardware roll through Tiananmen Square, with almost 200 aircraft flying overhead.
Chinese officials listed two dozen heads of state and government as attending, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and South African President Jacob Zuma among the most prominent.
Ban is also on the list, while Japanese officials, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are not attending.
Tokyo previously said Abe had decided to put off a visit to China at the time of the parade, owing to opposition at home over his controversial bid to expand the role of Japan’s military.
However, local media said the government was concerned about the anti-Japanese nature of the display.
Abe had previously expressed a desire to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) early next month, but the talks had not been confirmed.
“The Japanese government’s ‘concern’ about UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Beijing betrays the narrow-mindedness of the Shinzo Abe administration and its obstinacy in clinging to wrong perceptions of history,” the China Daily newspaper said in an editorial yesterday. “Such an open display of displeasure is against diplomatic etiquette, not to mention that Japan’s concerns are ill-grounded as well as unreasonable.”
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama — who in 1995 issued a landmark apology for the war — is to be present at the commemorations in a personal capacity.
France and Italy are to send their foreign ministers, officials said, but the governments of the US, Germany and Canada are to be represented only by their resident ambassadors.
China has struggled to attract global interest for the parade as world leaders are wary of the tone of the event, and the risk of lending it legitimacy.
Beijing is becoming increasingly assertive in the region and regularly accuses Tokyo of failing to show sufficient contrition for Japan’s 20th-century invasion of China.
The conflict is officially known in China as the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”
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