Nanjing Massacre victims remembered worldwide
BEIJING: The victims of the Nanjing Massacre that shook the world with its brutality when Japan invaded China are being remembered through events and are calling to cherish hard-won peace and acknowledge history with honesty.
An annual memorial for the nearly 300 000 people killed was held yesterday in Nanjing, the city in eastern China that suffered one of the bloodiest times the world has witnessed.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior officials joined representatives from all walks of life at the state ceremony marking the 80th anniversary to pay a silent tribute.
In Japan, about 200 people attended a testimony meeting in Shizuoka city on Tuesday. Lu Ling, daughter of a massacre survivor who was stabbed 37 times by Japanese soldiers, shared her mother’s ordeal with the Japanese attendees.
“The massacre imposed tremendous suffering on my family, the people in Nanjing, and the Chinese people,” she said.
Masataka Mori, a former professor of irenology (study of peace) at Shizuoka University, said people were revising history to distort the truth about the Nanjing carnage. “It is hoped that more people could know and pass on the truth,” Mori said.
The massacre was also mourned in The Hague, Netherlands, on Tuesday. About 200 Chinese people and students living there attended the memorial held a day ahead of China’s national memorial day for Nanjing massacre victims.
“We hold a memorial ceremony in The Netherlands not only to mourn the victims, but also to tell the truth. No attempt to deny history will ever be accepted,” said Zhong Linchang, head of the Association of Cantonese Business in The Netherlands.
Henk Kool, president of the Netherlands-China Friendship Society, urged Japanese who denied the truth to look into the facts. “If you want to be forgiven, you must first recognise and remember.”
In San Francisco, hundreds of people from the Chinese, Korean and Philippine communities gathered on Sunday. Jennifer Cheung, chairperson of the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition and one of the organisers of the event, said the commemoration meant to promote peace instead of harbouring hatred toward the Japanese perpetrators.
But Tokyo has repeatedly refused to apologise for the atrocities and continued to deny that nearly 200 000 Asian women and girls, including Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos, were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, Cheung said.
Japan invaded north-east China in September 1931. A full-scale invasion of China followed on July 7, 1937. On December 13 that year, Nanjing fell to the invaders who slaughtered civilians and soldiers who had put down their arms.
In February 2014, China’s top legislature designated December 13 as a national memorial day. – Xinhua