Nanjing People Protest Against Gathering in Japan to Deny Nanjing Massacre

People from all walks of life in Nanjing, the capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province have in the past few days staged rallies to protest against the Japanese right-wing's planned gatherings in Osaka on Sunday aimed at denying the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.

Historians with the Research Institute of the Nanjing Massacre (RINM), Nanjing University, the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, and the Second Chinese Historical Archives have presented a copious amount of historical evidence proving the occurance of the Nanjing Massacre and uncovering the evil and arrogance of the Japanese military.

They pointed out that in the new century of peace and development, the real purpose of the Osaka gathering is to distort historical fact and whitewash war crimes committed by the Japanese invaders.

Sun Zhaiwei, RINM vice-chairman, said that the gathering is a blatant denial of the massacre, in which about 300,000 unarmed Chinese were slaughtered by Japanese aggressors.

People in China, Asia and the world must not tolerate the group's manipulation of historical facts and provocation to world peace, he noted.

Jurists, teachers, professors, publishers and media professionals in Nanjing have also held meetings to decry the planned Sunday gathering.

Experts from the Jiangsu Provincial Law Association, the Jiangsu Provincial Society of Lawyers and the city's Office of Notarization said that the Nanjing Massacre was a wartime atrocity committed by the Japanese troops on the Chinese people and it is awidely-ackowledged barbarity that cannot be denied.

During the Nanjing Massacre, more than 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers in the city were killed. Survivors of the massacre, foreigners in the city and some Japanese soldiers are witnesses to the event, and they have expressed their outrage over the upcoming gathering.

The piles of bones of the victims found in many sites in the city are also irrefutable evidence of the massacre, the experts said.

Liu Qingning, an officer with the city's Notarization Office, said that the Japanese right-wingers attempt to deny the massacre and they said that the Nanjing incident was just a fable and the crimes were actually perpetrated by the Chinese army.

"That is total nonsense," he pointed out.

Many history professors and media professionals noted that Japanese right-wingers have continued to deny the massacre and concocted a series of incidents that contradict historical facts.

"This shows that the world is not as peaceful as people thought and there is still a long way to go for the Chinese and world peace activists," said Ding Qun, former director of the Jiangsu Television Station.


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