A Japanese court yesterday overturned a ruling that had for the first time awarded compensation to a Chinese forced laborer from World War II, who spent 13 years hiding after escaping from a mine in 1945.
The Tokyo High Court scrapped the landmark July 2001 order by a lower court for the Japanese government to pay the family of the late Liu Lianren ?20 million (US$184,160) in compensation for failing to protect him.
The high court acknowledged it was illegal for Japan to have neglected Liu after the war but said the plaintiff could not seek redress.
"The right to demand compensation expired as the 20-year statute of limitations had run out," presiding judge Yoshiaki Nishida said.
"There is no special reason to make an exception," he said, as quoted by Jiji Press.
The latest ruling comes amid tense relations between China and Japan, with Beijing demanding Tokyo do more to show remorse over its bloody 1931-1945 occupation. In appealing the district court's ruling, the Japanese government had argued the state "did not have the duty to protect Mr Liu" and was unable to know his life was in danger. Tokyo also said the 1972 peace treaty with Beijing had nullified Chinese individuals' right to compensation for Japanese wartime atrocities.
Liu was one of the tens of thousands of Chinese brought to toil in Japan, which employed slave labor from neighboring countries as it invaded Asia.
Liu, then 31, was taken prisoner in China in October 1944 by a force linked with the Japanese Imperial Army and transferred to Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.
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