BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Conniving at provocative words and deeds by Japan's right-wing forces in any form will only revive the specter of militarism and put the people of Asia in danger again, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Spokesperson Guo Jiakun made the remarks after neighboring countries including Russia vocally opposed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's erroneous remarks on Taiwan. Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia and other countries openly reaffirmed their support to the one-China principle.
Media outlets and academics from regional countries also stated that the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during WWII inflicted untold sufferings on Asia and the world and that instead of deeply reflecting on Japan's war crimes, some political forces in Japan tried to deny, distort and even whitewash the history of aggression, and attempted to breach the pacifist constitution and "remilitarize" Japan.
Guo said that over the last century, under the pretext of "survival-threatening situation," Japanese militarists waged a war of aggression against China and other Asian countries, taking millions of lives and committing horrendous atrocities across the continent.
During WWII, among the three mass killings of civilians committed by the Japanese military, over 300,000 were murdered in the Nanjing massacre, an estimated 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed in just one month in the Manila massacre, and the death toll of the massacre in Singapore was tens of thousands.
"It's documented in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East Judgment that the Japanese military created over 100 large-scale massacres in Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and other places," said Guo.
Prisoners of war (POWs) from Allied nations were treated cruelly by the Japanese military, among whom 27 percent were killed after capture. In the Bataan Death March, about 15,000 U.S. and Philippine POWs died under maltreatment, Guo added.
Hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian people and Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese military perished in building the Burma-Thailand Railway, he said, adding that over four million Chinese workers forcibly recruited by the Japanese military died or injured because of overwork under brutal conditions.
He also mentioned that women and girls from China, the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, the Netherlands and other countries and regions were brutally forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military as "comfort women."
"Japan's war crimes must not be erased and the verdict on its history of aggression must not be changed," Guo said, noting that any tolerance on the provocative words and deeds of Japanese right-wing forces will only revive the specter of militarism and once again put the Asian people in danger.
Countries have the responsibility and obligation to join hands in thwarting any attempt to revive militarism and Fascism, defending the outcomes of WWII victory, upholding the post-war international order and safeguarding world peace and stability, Guo said. ■
