China rejects Japanese plea on WWII sex slave records
Print Edition
CHINA yesterday rejected Japan’s call for it to withdraw an application to register records of Japan’s wartime sex slaves with UNESCO.
“We will not accept Japan’s unreasonable protest, and will not drop our application,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing.
Earlier in the day, a Japanese government spokesman said Tokyo had asked China to withdraw the application.
Hua said: “The aim of China’s application is to firmly bear history in mind and cherish peace, respect human dignity and prevent behaviors against humanity, human rights and human beings from happening again.”
On Tuesday, China applied to UNESCO to list documents relating to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s wartime sex slaves, so-called “comfort women,” on the Memory of the World Register.
UNESCO’s Memory of the World program, launched in the 1990s, has registered dozens of projects to reflect the “documentary heritage” of different periods. Documents include Britain’s 13th century Magna Carta, the Diary of Anne Frank and an annotated copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.
Historians estimate that 200,000 women were forced into sexual servitude by Japanese forces during WWII. In a landmark 1993 statement, then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono recognized the involvement of Japanese authorities in coercing the women.
In February, China condemned a Japanese city’s application to ask UNESCO to register in the same program the wills and farewell letters of kamikaze suicide pilots.
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