- (AFP) - A Japanese court rejected compensation claims
by Chinese who were victims of wartime atrocities by Japan's notorious
germ warfare unit while admitting its actions were "terrible."
-
- The Tokyo District Court rejected the claims but handed
the plaintiffs a moral victory, delivering the first judicial verdict recognising
the Japanese military had engaged in germ warfare.
-
- "The damage inflicted by germ warfare was terrible
and tremendous, and the now-defunct Japanese (Imperial) army cannot be
spared from the evaluation that its act of war was inhumane," presiding
judge Koji Iwata said Tuesday.
-
- But the responsibility of the state had already been
settled under international law, the judge said, arguing individuals do
not have the right to demand compensation from a state they fought.
-
- The civil suit had been brought by 180 Chinese plaintiffs
who claim they are survivors or relatives of the victims of Japanese germ
warfare attacks in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces from 1940 to 1942.
-
- They had sought an apology and damages of 10 million
yen (84,000 dollars) each from Tokyo for atrocities carried out by Unit
731, including "bombing" cities with plague, cholera and other
germs.
-
- The Japanese government, which only acknowledged there
was a Unit 731 decades after the end of World War II, says it knows nothing
about its wrongdoings and has rejected related damages claims.
-
- Plaintiffs voiced disappointment and indignation to the
ruling after a case lasting five years.
-
- "I was shocked ... I will not accept this unfair
verdict," said Xu Wanzhi, 61, from Hunan and a relative of a victim.
-
- "My son will inherit the fight after I die, and
grandchildren will take it over after my son dies. I will fight this to
the very end," he told a news conference, drawing applause from fellow
Chinese plaintiffs and supporters present.
-
- Koken Tsuchiya, leading counsel for the plaintiffs and
former head of Japan's bar association, said it was "very regrettable
that the claims were rejected based on a worn-out legal argument."
-
- But he noted it was "very significant that the facts
of germ warfare, its damage and infections that killed many people ...
were fully recognised in an official judicial ruling."
-
- "This will make it impossible for the state to deny,
distort or conceal the facts," Tsuchiya said.
-
- Another plaintiff, Wang Xuan, who lost several members
of her family to Japanese brutality, said the recognition had "a very
positive meaning."
-
- The ruling presented "a contradiction" that
the state is recognised to have committed crimes but does not have to compensate
for it, she said.
-
- "Any person with a conscience, a sense of justice
or morals, would reach the conclusion that the contradiction needs to be
resolved," she said.
-
- Unit 731 was set up in Manchuria after the Japanese Kwangtung
army formed a puppet state in northeastern China in 1931.
-
- With headquarters in Harbin, the 2,000-strong unit operated
till the end of World War II as what some historians call a killing factory
cultivating fatal germs and conducting live autopsy.
-
- It is blamed for the deaths of up to 10,000 Chinese and
Allied prisoners of war (POWs), according to estimates in Japanese, Chinese
and other studies.
-
- Records show people from China, Korea, Mongolia and Russia
were used as guinea pigs, called "logs" by the Unit.
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|
