China will set up a special database and upgrade the protection of documents regarding the Nanjing Massacre after files on the atrocity were listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
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Inscription of the dossier into the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, created to preserve significant and endangered documents, was announced on the website of the UN’s scientific and cultural body.
The massacre known as the “Rape of Nanjing” is an exceptionally sensitive issue in the often-tense relations between Japan and China, with Beijing charging that Tokyo has failed to atone for the atrocity.
Yasuhisa Kawamura, press secretary for the Foreign Ministry, said in a statement issued Saturday that it was extremely regrettable to see UNESCO add documents related to the Nanjing Incident to its Memory of the World list, despite the fact that UNESCO should be neutral and impartial as an global organization.
“As a responsible member of UNESCO, the Japanese government will seek a reform of this important project, so that it will not be used politically”, it said in a statement.
But UNESCO’s decision came after a two-year process where experts rigorously studied the nominations with an unbiased attitude.
But documents on Japan’s drafting of women to serve as sex slaves during the World War II, which Chinese government attempted to register as well, was not included this time.
Hua welcomed UNESCO’s decision and said the documents will be protected and disseminated around the world.
The documents filed by China are more than convincing, with detailed interviews with several victims, first-hand film footage from American missionary John Magee and photos taken by Japanese soldiers depicting the murder of civilians and rape of women.
As a country that has yet to sincerely own up to its history of aggression in World War II, Japan tried to block the UNESCO move.
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On December 13, 1937 when Japanese invaders occupied Nanjing in east China, they began six weeks of destruction, pillage and slaughter in the city, which were planned, organized and purposefully executed. No respected historians and mainstream academics in the world doubt that the massacre took place.
