http://dapmalaysia.org  

Malaysia’s stand on Japanese bid for a permanent seat in UN Security Council should hinge on Japanese government’s sincerity in meaningful follow-up actions to Koizumi’s apology in Jakarta, including repudiating revisionist history textbooks white-washing Japanese war crimes and stop honouring Class A Japanese war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine


Speech
-
on the Foreign Ministry in the second supplementary estimates 2004
by Lim Kit Siang

(Dewan Rakyat, Monday):  Yesterday, hundreds of Chinese associations in the country, such as Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Malacca  and Muar, signed and affixed their seals to protest against Japan’s refusal to face up squarely and remorsefully  to its historic wrongs in its war crimes and atrocities  against Asians in the 1930s and the Second World War. 

At the Bandung 50th Anniversary Asian-African Summit in Jakarta on Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi publicly expressed apology for Japanese war crimes and atrocities sixty years ago. This is not the first apology by a Japanese leader although this is the first time it is made at an international conference.   

In 1995, Japanese  Socialist Party Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama became the first Japanese leader to apologise for Japanese war crimes and atrocities, although his sentiments appeared to be more that of an individual and his political party than that of the ruling Japanese establishment elite. 

This is why although the Murayama “apology” formula  has been repeated by other Japanese leaders, including Prime Ministers, in the past decade, the issue of the sincerity of Japanese regret and remorse for the war crimes and atrocities refuse to be laid to  rest, periodically re-surfacing to undermine Asian and international stability. 

This is no different with Koizumi’s apology in Jakarta.  On the same morning that he expressed Japanese apology for war crimes and atrocities, some 80 MPs from the Japanese ruling party made their pilgrimage  to the Yasukuni Shrine which memorialized 14 Japanese Class war criminals, raising immediately anew the sincerity of Koizumi’s apology. 

Japan wants Asian support for its bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, but would Germany, which is also bidding for a seat in the UN Security Council, secure any European support, whether from France, the United Kingdom and the other nation-victims of Hitler’s Nazi Germany,  if post-war  German leaders make regular visits to Nazi memorials after apologizing for World War II war crimes and atrocities? 

The Malaysian government should take the  stand that the Japanese bid for a permanent seat in UN Security Council should hinge on the Japanese government’s sincerity in meaningful follow-up actions to Koizumi’s apology in Jakarta, including; 

  • The Japanese Government repudiating revisionist history textbooks white-washing Japanese war crimes and atrocities, where the Nanjing Massacre 1937-38, in which Japanese troops killed some 300,000 civilians and non-combatants, with  30,000 to 60,000 women raped, was referred  as an “Incident”.  Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was Education Minister in March 2001 who approved the “white-washing” militarist and revisionist Japanese textbooks.
  • The Japanese Government, in particular the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers, stop honouring Class A Japanese war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine.
  • Giving fair and just compensation to the victims of Japanese war crimes and atrocities, including  the 100,000 to 200,000  “comfort women” forced into prostitution to “comfort” Japanese troops or civilian victims including in  Malaysia and other South-east Asian nations.

(25/4/2005)


*  Lim Kit Siang, Parliamentary Opposition Leader, MP for Ipoh Timur & DAP Central Policy and Strategic Planning Commission Chairman