Victims of Germ Warfare Protest over Japanese Court Ruling

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Victims of Germ Warfare Protest over Japanese Court Ruling

The Tokyo District Court Tuesday admitted that Japan waged germ warfare in China during World War II, but it rejected claims for compensation against the Japanese Government by more than 100 Chinese plaintiffs. About 400 Chinese victims in central China protested over the ruling.

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Victims Protest over Japanese Court Ruling

About 400 Chinese victims of Japan's germ warfare in central China Tuesday protested over a ruling by a Japanese court against compensation claims by Chinese victims.

Awaiting the first-trial ruling, they gathered in the early morning at the reception office for victims of Japanese germ warfare during World War II in Changde city in Hunan Province.

At noon, a telephone call from Japan revealed the claims for compensation by Chinese victims were rejected.

He Yingzhen, one of the victims in Changde, said, "It's a ridiculous ruling, and we all believe so."

She said, "The Tokyo District Court recognized the basic fact that the invading Japanese military had engaged in germ warfare in China, but it still rejected our compensation plea."

They chanted slogans calling for respect for human rights, justice, and strongly demanded an apology and compensation from the Japanese government for the Chinese victims.

Japanese presiding judge Koji Iwata reportedly said the damage inflicted by germ warfare was terrible and tremendous, and the now-defunct Japanese army could not be spared from the judgment that its act of war was inhumane.

But the responsibility of the state had already been settled under international law, the judge said, arguing individuals did not have the right to demand compensation from a state with which they had been at war.

Unit 731 was set up in northeast China after the Japanese Kwangtung army formed a puppet state in China in 1931.

With its headquarters in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, the 2,000-strong unit operated till the endof World War II as what some historians call a killing factory cultivating fatal bacteria and conducting vivisections.

It is blamed for the deaths of up to 10,000 Chinese and allied prisoners of war and people from China, the Korean Peninsula, Mongolia and the Soviet Union were used as guinea pigs.

Unlike Germany which apologized for its wartime atrocities and offered compensation for victims, Japan has refused to face up to the fact that its wartime atrocities in China were responsible for the deaths of dozens of millions of Chinese civilians and soldiers, not to mention compensation.

Lawsuits involving Japan's war crimes

On May 10, 2000, 15 Chinese men forcibly taken to Japan to work in the Mistui Mining Company's coal mines during World War II presented lawsuits to Fukuoka District Court. On April 27, the court ordered the mining company to pay US$1.28 million in damages to the 15 labourers. About 39,000 Chinese overall were transported to Japan by the Japanese invaders during the war.

On March 29, 2002, Tokyo District Court rejected a lawsuit filed against the Japanese Government demanding compensation by two "comfort women" - females abducted and used for sex - from North China's Shanxi Province. The lawsuit, filed in February 1996, demanded compensation from the Japanese Government of 40 million yen (US$301,250).

In recent years, former Chinese "comfort women," like those in other Asian countries, have resorted to legal means to demand compensation for their suffering. However, none has won a case.

Li Xiuying, an 82-year-old Chinese survivor of the notorious Nanjing massacre, achieved a landmark legal victory in Tokyo in early May this year. It was the first time a Japanese court had found in favour of a victim of the atrocity. Tokyo District Court ordered Toshio Matsumura, author of "Big Doubts about the Nanjing Massacre," and the book's publishers to pay a total of 1.5 million yen (US$11,640) to Li, who the book said had falsely claimed to have survived the massacre. Li's 1999 lawsuit said she barely escaped with her life after being stabbed repeatedly by Japanese soldiers as they rampaged through the city of Nanjing in December 1937.

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