Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (front) is visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on December 26. Photo: Xinhua

Willy Brandt, former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is kneeling down at the monument to victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on December 7, 1970. Photo: Xinhua

 

China's ambassador to Britain has invoked Lord Voldemort, the villain of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, in a diplomatic standoff between Beijing and Tokyo over the Japanese prime minister's visit to a controversial war shrine.

"In the Harry Potter story, the dark wizard Voldemort dies hard because the seven horcruxes, which contain parts of his soul, have been destroyed," Ambassador Liu Xiaoming wrote Wednesday in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul," he added.

Liu's op-ed comes amid the tensions between China and Japan over Shinzo Abe's visit to the shrine last week.

Abe said last week the goal of his shrine visit was "to pledge and determine that never again will people suffer in war," but the site is seen elsewhere as a reminder of Japan's 20th-century aggression against China and other Asian nations.

Liu reminded Britons that the victims of Japan's wartime horrors included their own countrymen.

"China and Britain were wartime allies," Liu wrote. "Our troops fought shoulder to shoulder against Japanese aggressors and made enormous sacrifices."

"Our two countries have a common responsibility to work with the international community to oppose and condemn any words or actions aimed at invalidating the peaceful post-war consensus and challenging international order," he added.