A handful of Japanese rightists staged a farce in Osaka Sunday designed to deny the notorious 1937 Nanjing Massacre that has been proved by history, arousing strong indignation of the Chinese people.

The Chinese people and the peace-loving forces in Japan strongly condemned the gathering staged by the Japanese rightists in the International Peace Center in Osaka Sunday to blatantly deny the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, a wartime atrocity committed by Japanese troops against the Chinese people.

More than half a century ago, the Japanese militarists launched a war against China which had wantonly trampled on the land of China and killed innocent Chinese people. The whole world was appalled by the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937, during which the Japanese aggressor troops slaughtered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers and raped tens of thousands of Chinese women and girls in the city, an atrocity rarely seen in the human history.

Yet, 60 years after the massacre, Japanese right-wing forces attempted to reverse the judgment in the case of Nanjing Massacre, openly terming the Nanjing Massacre "false," "a fable and the biggest lie in the 20th century," and even holding mass rallies to publicly deny the hard historical facts.

An 86-year old Japanese, Shiro Azuma, a veteran soldier who personally took part in the attack on Nanjing in 1937, uncovered the atrocities by the Japanese militarists through his diaries.

However, Azuma's appeal was repeatedly rejected by Japanese courts, which turn black into white, running against the common morality.

Yet the truth of the crimes by Japanese militarists can never be whitewashed. The Nanjing Massacre is an irrefutable fact. survivors of the massacre and other witnesses have come out to tell their experiences, and some Japanese contrite veterans, such as Azuma, have revealed the brutality of the Japanese aggressors in their diaries. Countless data in China and other countries have shown the truth of the Nanjing Massacre.

The then investigation by the Far East Military Court had proved that the Japanese aggressor troops killed more than 300,000Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers during the Nanjing Massacre,an unprecedented record in the human history. In recent years, more evidence has been coming out to prove the crimes committed by the Japanese militarists.

Among others, "Rabe's Diary" and other documents as well as piles of bones of the victims found in Nanjing are the most direct and convincing proofs of the crimes of the Japanese militarists. Large amounts of human testimony and material evidence have made the Japanese aggressors bound to the disgraced history. So the Japanese rightists will find them in vain when trying to deny the occurrence of the atrocities before all these hard evidence.

The reflux to distort the history of Japanese aggression and tocover up and even beautify the crimes by the Japanese militarists have long existed in the Japanese society. Those holding the ghost of militarists are attempting to totally deny the history ofJapanese aggression against China by repudiating the Nanjing Massacre, which is the biggest evidence of the crimes committed by the Japanese aggressors.

In terming the Nanjing Massacre the "biggest lie in the 20th century," the Japanese right-wingers are themselves telling the biggest lie in the 20th century. But, whatever how many lies theyare telling, the fact that millions of Chinese people were killed by the Japanese aggressors can never be covered up.

If the adverse trend of denying hard historical facts of Japanese aggression runs rampant, the foundation for Japan's road to peace and development will be foundering, and the political basis of Sino-Japanese relationship will be undermined. So, people must keep vigilance against this trend in Japanese society.

To respect history and to use the past as a mirror are a major basis and essential starting point for the development of stable, long-term Sino-Japanese relations of good neighborliness.

Only by keeping in mind the bitter memory of the Nanjing Massacre by avoiding the repetition of such a historical tragedy, can the Chinese and Japanese people maintain their friendship generation after generation, and can Japan be ensured to continue to embark on the road of peaceful development. (Xinhua)