Guo Jiakun

Since modern times, Japanese militarism, under the pretext of so-called "survival-threatening situation", launched aggressive wars against China and other Asian neighbors, committing all manner of atrocities wherever it went, leaving behind horrifying blood debts, the Chinese FM spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday in response to a question about neighboring countries such as Russia have recently voiced opposition to the erroneous Taiwan-related remarks made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and countries including Pakistan, Laos and Cambodia have publicly expressed support for the one-China principle, while media outlets and scholars from multiple countries in the region have stated that certain political forces in Japan have attempted to deny, distort and even glorify its history of aggression, and they have also sought to break through the constraints of the pacifist Constitution and pursue remilitarization, which gravely hurts the feelings of people of all countries and poses a threat to regional peace. 

Among the three major massacres of civilians committed by the Japanese army during WWII, the Nanjing Massacre alone resulted in more than 300,000 deaths. In the Manila massacre, about 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed within just one month, and the massacre in Singapore claimed tens of thousands of local lives, Guo said. 

According to the ruling records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese military carried out more than 100 large-scale massacres in Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, and elsewhere. The Japanese army brutally mistreated allied prisoners of war, with a POW mortality rate as high as 27 percent. During the Bataan Death March alone, around 15,000 American and Filipino POWs died. The Japanese military also carried out forced labor on a massive scale: tens of thousands of Southeast Asian laborers and allied POWs were abused to death during the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway, and more than four million Chinese laborers who were forcibly conscripted by the Japanese army suffered deaths and injuries from harsh conditions and extreme labor intensity. In addition, the Japanese army forced women from China, the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, the Netherlands and other countries and regions into sexual slavery as "comfort women," committing appalling crimes against humanity.

War crimes cannot be erased, and the history of aggression cannot be denied. Any indulgence or appeasement of Japanese right-wing provocations will only revive the specter of militarism and once again place the peoples of Asia in danger. All countries have the responsibility and obligation to join hands in resisting any attempt to revive militaristic fascism, to jointly safeguard the fruits of victory in World War II, to defend the post-war international order, and to ensure world peace and stability, the spokesperson said.