Japan yesterday criticized UNESCO’s decision to inscribe documents related to the Nanjing Massacre in its Memory of the World register, describing it as “extremely regrettable” and calling for the process to be reformed.
On Friday, the UN’s cultural and scientific body agreed to 47 new inscriptions, including a request by Beijing to mark documents recording the mass murder and rape committed by Japanese troops after the fall of Nanjing in 1937.
The massacre, often referred to as the “Rape of Nanjing,” is an exceptionally sensitive issue in the often-tense relations between Japan and China, with Beijing charging that Tokyo has failed to atone for the atrocity.
Japan had called for the Nanjing documents not to be included and accused UNESCO of being politicized.
“It is extremely regrettable that a global organization that should be neutral and fair entered the documents in the Memory of the World register, despite the repeated pleas made by the Japanese government,” the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“As a responsible member of UNESCO, the Japanese government will seek a reform of this important project, so that it will not be used politically,” the statement said.
The UNESCO decision came after a two-year process during a meeting of experts tasked with studying nominations from 40 nations.
The new inscriptions were agreed at a meeting that ran from Sunday to Tuesday and was held in the United Arab Emirates.
The Japanese military invaded China in the 1930s and the two nations fought a full-scale war from 1937 until Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945.
China says 300,000 people died in a six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction after the Japanese military entered Nanjing. Some respected foreign academics put the number lower, but there is very little academic doubt that a massacre took place.
However, in Japan, some conservatives and nationalists deny that atrocities were committed, a source of regular regional friction.
In February, a senior executive at Japan’s publicly funded TV broadcaster NHK denied the massacre, reportedly dismissing accounts of it as “propaganda.”
Japan’s official position is that “the killing of a large number of noncombatants, looting and other acts occurred,” but it adds “it is difficult to determine” the true number of victims.
In April this year, Japan rebuffed protests about newly approved textbooks after complaints that they failed to use the word “massacre” when referring to the mass slaughter of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, preferring the term “incident.”
Tokyo frequently clashes with many of its Asian neighbors over its war record, with many accusing the nation of failing to atone for its atrocities or recognize the suffering that took place under the yoke of Japanese militarism.
The Memory of the World register, set up in 1992, is aimed at preserving humanity’s documentary heritage and it currently holds 348 documents and archives that come from nations all over the world.
“It is my deep and firm conviction that the Memory of the World Program should be guided in its work to preserve documentary heritage and memory for the benefit of present and future generations in the spirit of international cooperation and mutual understanding, building peace in the minds of women and men,” UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said.
Japan had two entries recognized by UNESCO on Friday.
The first was a body of 18th-century documents amassed by a Buddhist temple and the second a tranche of documents related to the internment of Japanese prisoners in Siberian labor camps after the end of World War II.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
RSS