A Chinese court has awarded a Nanjing Massacre survivor 1.6 million yuan (US$200,000) in compensation after ruling in her favor against two Japanese historians who claimed she fabricated her account of the atrocity, state media said yesterday.
The court in Nanjing ruled that Xia Shuqin (
Shudo Higashinakano and Toshio Matsumura claimed in two books, A Thorough Review of the Nanjing Massacre, and The Big Question of the Nanjing Massacre, that historical accounts of the event were untrue. The books, published in the late 1990s, also claimed that accounts by Xia and another survivor, Li Xiuying (
The Nanjing court's verdict also requires the Japanese publisher, Tendensha, to immediately stop publishing the books and recall those already distributed, Xinhua said.
Higashinakano, 58, rejected the ruling, saying both Japanese and Chinese law would require the case to be heard in Japan to have any validity.
Hiromichi Moteki, the president of Sekai Shuppan Inc, which published an English translation of Higashinakano's book, said that the demand to stop printing the book was "unthinkable."
"These books are written based on firm facts and evidence. This ruling lacks common sense," he said.
Historians generally agree that the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women during their 1937-1938 occupation of Nanjing. China says up to 300,000 people were killed in Nanjing during the rampage of murder, rape and looting by Japanese troops, also known as the Rape of Nanking.
Li, who died in December 2004, won a defamation case against Matsumura in Japan in April 2003 and was awarded ?1.5 million (US$12,900). Li, 18 years old and pregnant at the time of the massacre, was slashed by swords while hiding in an American mission school, she said.
According to Xia, now 76, on Dec. 13, 1937, a group of Japanese soldiers forced their way into her family's home in Nanjing and murdered seven of her family members.
Xia and her four-year-old sister were seriously injured but escaped, she says.
Last year, Higashinakano and Matsumura filed a lawsuit against Xia in Tokyo District Court demanding that she acknowledge that her lawsuit in Nanjing was groundless. In May, Xia countersued the two men in the same court. The Japanese men dropped their lawsuit.
China’s military yesterday showed off its machine-gun equipped robot battle “dogs” at the start of its biggest ever drills with Cambodian forces. More than 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, are taking part in the drills at a remote training center in central Kampong Chhnang Province and at sea off Preah Sihanouk Province. The 15-day exercise, dubbed Golden Dragon, also involves 14 warships — three from China — two helicopters and 69 armored vehicles and tanks, and includes live-fire, anti-terrorism and humanitarian rescue drills. The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their
A Philippine boat convoy bearing supplies for Filipino fishers yesterday said that it was headed back to port, ditching plans to sail to a reef off the Southeast Asian country after one of their boats was “constantly shadowed” by a Chinese vessel. The Atin Ito (“This Is Ours”) coalition convoy on Wednesday set sail to distribute fuel and food to fishers and assert Philippine rights in the disputed South China Sea. “They will now proceed to the Subic fish port to mark the end of their successful mission,” the group said in a statement. A Philippine Coast Guard vessel escorting the convoy was
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
STREET WATCH: Residents watched over barricades blocking roads and flew white flags to show that they intended to keep an eye on their neighborhoods France yesterday deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency after three nights of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded. Pro-independence, largely indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiraled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire. On roads, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots. Armored vehicles roved the city’s palm-lined boulevards, usually