Extracts. Commentary: Ironclad Evidence Brooks No Denial Fifty-six years have passed since the victory of the Chinese people's War of Resistance against Japan. As one of the two major hotbeds of World War II, Japan committed towering crimes in the war, bringing untold sufferings to the Chinese people and inflicting on China a heavy casualty of 35 million soldiers and civilians and an economic loss of US$600 billion. However, for more than half a century, Japanese right-wing forces, instead of making profound introspection, have constantly engaged in calling back the spirit of the militarist war dead, trying to reverse the verdict on their acts of aggression. Events relating to history textbooks and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Shrine visit have recently occurred one after another, all these cannot but have aroused the Chinese people's vehement indignation and their sorrowful recall of the past national frightful calamity. Tragic Massacre Rare on Earth The Japanese aggressors' brutal slaughtering of the Chinese people permeated the whole course of the Japanese aggressive war against China. Shortly after the outbreak of the "September 18, 1931 Incident", Japanese troops buried alive more than 200 Chinese captives in Changchun; and in November caught and killed several hundred wounded soldiers of the units under Ma Zhanshan in Qiqihar; in September 1932, they created the Pingdingshan massacre in the suburbs of Fushun, killing more than 3,000 villagers, leaving only one survival in the whole village. In the history of Japanese invasion of China, the largest massacre took place in Nanjing. After they captured the city on December 13, 1937, the Japanese aggressor troops under Matsui Iwane started frenzy slaughtering, with blood drenching this ancient city, in this massacre, more than 300,000 Nanjing citizens and disarmed soldiers were murdered, one-third of the streets and buildings were burned; at the same time, the Japanese aggressors also created about 20,000 incidents of raping and carried out large-scale plundering, the cruel and savage Japanese troops had committed really shocking and heinous crimes. The Japanese aggressor troops pushed the barbarous policy of "burning all, killing all and looting all" in their sanguinary "mop-up" campaign in the anti-Japanese bases, committing countless bloody crimes. Statistics revealed that between 1937-45, in the seven anti-Japanese bases--Shanxi-Suiyuan, Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei, Hebei-Rehe-Liaoning, Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu-Anhui and Central Plains alone, 3.18 million Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed by Japanese troops. Bacterial and Chemical Wars Make One Boil with Anger In the war of aggression against China, Japan, in brazen violation of international law, developed and used bacterial weapons in China and carried out bacterial war, killing innumerable Chinese people. The notorious "731 Troop", the "100 Unit" and other bacterial warfare units totaled more than 20,000 people. They conducted dissection of living persons for lab experiment, the number of people used for this purpose reached from 400 to 600 annually . According to incomplete statistics, from 1939 to August 1945, the "731 Unit" butchered at least 3,000 people. Beginning from the second half of 1940, the Japanese aggressor troops started large-scale use of bacterial weapons, such as highly and rapidly infectious bacterial spawns of high anti-personnel force, such as cholera, typhoid, pestilence and anthrax bacteria, as well as diphtheria and dysentery bacteria. The areas where Japanese troops conducted bacterial war covered the extensive regions of north China, Central China and Chongqing City, killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and innocent people. Besides the use of bacterial weapons, Japan, from the outset of its aggressive war against China, also used chemical weapons. Japanese troops released poison gas in the Chinese residential quarters and put poison into wells and rivers. According to incomplete statistics, in their war of aggression against China, the Japanese troops used chemical weapons more than 2,000 times, which covered 18 Chinese provinces and regions, inflicting a casualty of more than 90,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians. At the time of Japanese surrender, there were still more than 2 million poison gas bombs abandoned in various parts of China, leaving behind serious harm and hidden trouble to local people. Economic Pillage Perpetrated by All Means Economic plunder was one of the basic reasons for Japanese launch of aggressive war, as well as the main content of Japan's policy of "sustaining war with war". Japan's economic plunder of China mainly included the following aspects: First, forcible requisitioning of grain and raw materials to be supplied to Japanese troops on the front or to be transported out to Japan. In northeast China, Japan forcibly enforced the purchase and sale of grain, compelling peasants to sell most of their grain production at the lowest price stipulated by the puppet government. In areas inside Shanhaiguan Pass, Japanese troops looted army provisions in a disguised manner. In 1939, Japan transported out 700 million liters of grain from central China alone, in 1940, the figure rose to upwards of 900 million liters. In addition, Japan also wantonly plundered China's mineral resources. Second, monopolizing industry, agriculture, communications and trade, carrying out the export of capital. In May 1937, through the puppet Manchurian government, Japan published the "important industrial control method", under which 21 kinds of industrial products were placed under Japan's control. Third, controlling the banking business, Japan issued large amounts of paper money, extorting the wealth of the people in the occupied areas. Japan issued large amounts of puppet "Manchurian yuan" in northeast China. In areas inside Shanhaiguan Pass, from November 1937 to January 1941 Japan set up banks such as the puppet Mongolia-Xinjiang Bank, the China Joint Reserve Bank, and the "Central Reserve Bank respectively in Zhangjiakou, Beiping, Shanghai and Nanjing, relying on Japanese troops' bayonets, Japan issued huge amounts of counterfeit bank-notes without any credit value, so as to squeeze the blood and sweat and wealth of the Chinese people. Fourth, drafting Chinese laborers to work like horses for Japanese militarists. Incomplete statistics show that by the end of 1944, the number of laborers forcibly drafted in northeast China by the Japanese reached 3 million, of whom 29 percent of the total were persecuted to death. Particularly noteworthy was that during the Japanese war of aggression against China, countless Chinese women were forced by Japanese troops to serve as "comfort women", being subjected to inhuman treatment. Those were not all the towering crimes committed by Japanese militarists against the Chinese people. The Chinese and Japanese peoples must constantly expose Japanese militarists' crimes of aggression, and oppose any wrong behavior in covering up and distorting history, so as to clarify matters to the public worldwide, so that those who had experienced World War II will not forget the past, and the new generation will understand the historical truth, thereby fighting unremittingly for maintaining the general situation of peace and development of humankind. **** DPRK Condemns Japanese PM for His Visit to War Shrine The official Rodong Sinmun issued a commentary Friday to condemn Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for his recent official visit to Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi visited Tokyo's war shrine on August 13 to pay homage to Japan's war dead, including 14 Class A war criminals, despite strong opposition at home and abroad. The commentary stressed that the visit is an insult to those countries and peoples that fell victim to the Japanese imperialists' aggression and is nothing but an expression of his intention to embellish Japan's crime-woven past. While visiting the shrine, he paid "tribute" to the war dead, thus describing them as "patriots" and "heroes," through which he seeks to create an atmosphere of visiting the shrine in Japan and prepare all the Japanese as a "shock brigade" ready to go into a militarist war of reinvasion, the commentary noted. No one can predict what consequences they, obsessed with such ideological viewpoint and way of thinking, will bring to the world. Japan has emerged in the new century to be the source of disasters, said the commentary. The Japanese prime minister's visit to the shrine will make Japan stand further isolated and lead it to destruction. If the Japanese authorities put spurs to the moves to revive militarism, Japan will have no future, the commentary added. **** Hezbollah Vows to Counter Israeli Infringement Upon Lebanon Lebanese resistance guerrilla group Hezbollah on Thursday vowed to counter Israeli infringement upon Lebanon, the official NNA news agency reported. "We will take necessary measures to prevent the Jewish state from infiltrating into Lebanon," Hezbollah, or Party of God, said in a statement. "Israel is nothing but a threat to the Arab world in terms of policy, economy, culture and security," it added. Hezbollah also called on Arab countries to take a firm stand in the face of Israeli challenge. The statement followed a report by Lebanese Oriental radio that Israeli planes flew over Lebanese air space and broke sound barrier over central Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer earlier claimed that Hezbollah was posing a "direct threat to the free world and Israel's interests." He said Hezbollah has deployed about 8,000 Katyusha rocket- launchers and long-range missiles aimed at Israeli targets between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Ben Eliezer even claimed that Hezbollah could build a nuclear bomb within four years. Hezbollah spearheaded a guerrilla war to force Israel to end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000. ***** US Charges Russia of Proliferating Dangerous Weapons United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged on Thursday that Russia is helping Iran develop a nuclear arms program and aiding other states with dangerous technology, while opposing a US plan to defend itself against missile attack. "Now that's an awkward position, it seems to me, for them to be in," Rumsfeld said in a television interview. "I know they make an argument of whether it is proliferation of certain types of weapons. But there is no question that they are working with Iran on their nuclear capability," he added on the PBS Television's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Rumsfeld also charged that Russia was transferring technology to China, Iraq and other countries which have capabilities that could be dangerous to the world -- a charge Moscow has denied. Rumsfeld was questioned on the program about thus-far unsuccessful efforts by the Bush administration to persuade Russia to drop its opposition to the U.S. plan to develop a missile defense system and Moscow's refusal to agree to changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. That ABM treaty, between the United States and former Soviet Union, forbids national missile defenses by either country. In talks with Rumsfeld in Moscow, Russian leaders on Monday again rejected a US call for the two nations to jointly abandon the ABM pact. "Russia is still, I think, captured to a certain extent by the old Cold War mentality and fear and apprehension and concern about the West," the US defense secretary said. "The United States' position is that the treaty that is concerning us, which is 30 years old, is preventing us from defending the population centers here and our deployed forces and our friends and allies," he said. "And the Russian position is that they want to be free to have us not develop a ballistic missile defense capability, although they have a missile defense capability around Moscow with nuclear-tipped interceptors right now." At the same time, Rumsfeld said Russia was adding to US fears about emerging missile threats and weapons of mass estruction from "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. "That (Russian) position ... is basically: `Look America, you establish a policy of remaining vulnerable to ballistic missiles while we are protected by a missile defense system in Moscow and while we continue to work with other countries, like Iran and Iraq and various other countries, with respect to proliferating some technologies that are not very helpful to the rest of the world'," he said. ***** Milosevic Says He is Innocent Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, now jailed in the Hague, feels all right and believes he is innocent as what he has done conforms to the country's Constitution and law and the interests of the Yugoslav people, said a senior official of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) on Thursday. Zzivadin Jovanovich, the first vice chairman of the SPS, made these remarks at a press conference in Belgrade after a two-day visit to the former president by a five-member delegation. Jovanovich, who led the delegation, said that Milosevic fulfilled his fundamental mission as the head of state and a patriot by resisting the NATO bombardment which began on March 24, 1999. The accusation by the Hague-based International Court of Justice is aimed to conceal the crime of aggression committed by others, Jovanovich said. Milosevic discussed the domestic and regional situation when he met the delegation. His deliberations focused on issues related to his party, saying the most important thing at present is to strengthen the party's solidarity, Jovanovich said at the conference. Milosevic was arrested on April 1 by Serb police under the indictment of "abuse of power." Disregarding the objection of the Yugoslav Constitution court, the Serbian government transferred him on June 28 to the international tribunal in the Hague. **** Reception Marks 30th Anniversary of China-Iran Ties A reception was held Thursday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Iran <http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/data/iran.html> . Chen Haosu, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries,said the friendship between China and Iran goes back to ancient times. Since the forging of diplomatic ties between the two nations, and especially since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the friendly cooperation between China and Iran has continued to develop steadily, Chen noted, adding that along with the smooth development of state relations, the people-to-people friendly exchanges have also attained strong momentum. Both China and Iran advocate a multipolar world and dedicate themselves to the establishment of a just and equitable new international political and economic order, Chen said, stressing that China attaches great importance to the significant role Iran has played in international affairs and highly appreciates President Khatami's advocacy of cooperation between different civilizations. The strengthening of the friendly cooperative relations between China and Iran is not only in the fundamental interests of the two countries, but is also conducive to the maintenance of regional peace and stability,Chen added. Iranian Ambassador to China Mohammad Hossein Malaek said since the two nations established diplomatic ties, their relations have become closer and closer in the past 30 years, adding that in recent years this relationship has undergone continuous consolidation and development, and contacts and cooperation in culture, sports, science and education have also helped to boost bilateral relations. Present at the reception were Wan Guoquan, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and Yang Wenchang, vice-foreign minister. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
