Denial of Facts Earns Disdain: Opinion

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Denial of Facts Earns Disdain: Opinion

Facts can be distorted and history remade if political interests demand it, which is often true with some right-wing Japanese politicians.

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Facts can be distorted and history remade if political interests demand it, which is often true with some right-wing Japanese politicians.

Last Saturday, one senior Japanese politician displayed this kind of flair again.

Takami Eto, a 78-year-old veteran politician of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, tried to rewrite the history of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.

Speaking at a meeting of his party's chapter in western Japan, Eto dismissed as "a big lie" the statement that the Japanese army slaughtered as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians during its 1937-38 occupation of the East China city.

"That 300,000 people (were killed) in the Nanjing Massacre is a fabricated lie," Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted Eto as saying.

But who is really lying?

There is a mountain of ironclad evidence about the Nanjing Massacre, an atrocity committed by the Japanese military during its war of aggression in China.

Former Japanese prime ministers Tomiichi Murayama and Kaibu Toshiki visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum during their terms of office.

On different occasions, the Japanese Government has also expressed regret to China for the country's war-time atrocities.

However, a string of denials or distortions of history and facts about their country's militaristic past by right-wing Japanese politicians has not only hurt people's feelings in the victimized countries but also cast doubt on the sincerity of the remorse expressed by the Japanese Government towards the past wrongdoings.

Turning a blind eye to the facts and history, Eto's latest whitewashing of history only serves to rub salt in China's wounds again.

Political leanings aside, the sheer denial of the facts and truth deserves contempt.

If Japan is really committed to have a role in world affairs commensurate with its economic clout, it first should win the trust and respect of the international community.

As such, politicians should first look squarely at history, whether they are from the right or the left.

Distorting or whitewashing history will earn them nothing but disdain.

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