Fascist symbols have no place in society

Two Chinese tourists were detained in Berlin for giving a Nazi salute while posing for photographs in front of the Reichstag parliamentary building on Saturday. Three days later, the Shanghai Sihang Warehouse Anti-Japanese Aggression Museum issued a statement criticizing four Chinese youths for wearing Imperial Japanese Army uniforms and posing for photos in the warehouse, which Chinese forces successfully defended against the Japanese invaders in late 1937, and calling their act "impudent blasphemy".

The youths are citizens of a country where more than 35 million people died or were injured in World War II and have inadvertently, or otherwise, reopened old wounds.

The world has undergone radical changes since those days of endless horror. And almost everything has changed, from the interiors of homes to the exteriors of buildings, from our modes of transport to the way we shop. Perhaps the only thing that has not changed is that every society has its taboos - some religious, some historical. And every society objects to the breaking of those taboos.