China calls for united front against rebirth of militarism
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Tuesday that all countries have the responsibility and obligation to join hands in preventing any attempt to revive militarism or fascism and ensuring global peace and stability.
His remarks came as Russia and other neighboring countries voiced opposition to the erroneous remarks on Taiwan made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, while Pakistan, Laos, and Cambodia have publicly reaffirmed their support for the one-China principle.
At Tuesday's regular news conference, Guo noted that in modern history, Japanese militarism, under the pretext of a so-called state of survival crisis, launched aggressive wars against China and other Asian neighbors, committing atrocities wherever it went and leaving behind horrific crimes.
Among the three major massacres of civilians committed by the Japanese army during World War II, more than 300,000 people were killed in the Nanjing Massacre; around 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed in just one month during the Manila Massacre; and tens of thousands of local residents were killed in the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore.
Guo added that, according to the records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japan committed more than 100 large-scale massacres in Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, and other regions.
Japanese forces also brutalized Allied prisoners of war, carried out forced labor, and coerced women from China, the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, the Netherlands, and elsewhere into sexual slavery as "comfort women", he said.
"War crimes cannot be erased, and the history of aggression cannot be rewritten," Guo said, stressing that any connivance or indulgence toward provocative actions by Japanese right-wing forces would only allow the specter of militarism to re-emerge and once again place the people of Asia in danger.
He called for jointly safeguarding the hard-won victory of World War II and upholding the postwar international order.
