Yok Mu-ming, chairman of the New Party in Taiwan, offered condolences Friday morning to victims of the Nanjing Massacre, an atrocity committed by the invading Japanese troops in December 1937 during World War II.

Yok Mu-ming, chairman of the New Party in Taiwan, offered condolences Friday morning to victims of the Nanjing Massacre, an atrocity committed by the invading Japanese troops in December 1937 during World War II.

At the Memorial Hall of Compatriots Murdered in the Nanjing Massacre, Yok called on all the Chinese compatriots to draw lessons of history, be united and make concerted efforts to promote peace, prosperity and reunification of the motherland. "Discord among the people and secession of the nation will only result in contempt, bullying and killing by others," he said.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, Yok said, urging the Japanese militarist and rightist forces to repent their wartime crimes and take history as a mirror.

He rang a giant peace bell erected on the square of the Memorial Hall to pray for peace and wrote an inscription reading "never forget national humiliation".

More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were slain during the infamy Nanjing Massacre, which occurred after the forceful occupation of Nanjing, then the capital of China, on Dec. 13, 1937 by the intruding Japanese troops. About 20,000 women were raped and killed, and one third of the houses in the city were burned down in the six-week atrocity, which was taken one of the three bloodiest massacres of World War II.

The Nanjing municipal government built a memorial hall at the Jiangdong Gate in 1985 in memory of the victims.

The hall had received at least 11 million visitors from home and abroad by the end of June, 2005 since its inception, including more than 500,000 people from Japan.

Earlier Friday, Yok and his entourage paid tribute to the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution.

The 30-member delegation arrived in Nanjing from Guangzhou Thursday afternoon for the second leg of their eight-day mainland tour known as "a journey of the Chinese nation".

The tour, from July 6 to 13, will also take them to Dalian and Beijing.

Source: Xinhua