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Japan requested to cancel Lee's visa
December 17, 2004
China yesterday urged Japan to cancel a visa for a former Taiwan leader to
avoid damaging its ties with China, warning that Lee Teng-hui would promote
"Taiwan independence."
"The purpose of visiting Japan is to seek backing for Taiwan independence and
create external conditions for speeding up his independence activities," said
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.
"We hope the Japanese side would immediately repeal its decision giving consent
to Lee Teng-hui's visit to Japan," Liu said at a regular news briefing in
Beijing. "Otherwise, it will have a negative impact on relations between China
and Japan."
China also called on Japan to face up to its military's wartime use of sex
slaves after a Tokyo court rejected a lawsuit by four elderly Chinese women
seeking damages from the Japanese government for being raped repeatedly by
Japanese soldiers during the World War II.
"We think that the forced conscription of 'comfort women' is a very severe and
grave crime," the spokesman said. "We hope the Japanese side could approach
properly these historical remnants."
Liu said China had "taken note" of the latest ruling but didn't say what steps
the Chinese government wants Japan to take.
Japan's military shipped thousands of women from China, South Korea and other
Asian countries to provide sex for Japanese troops and to use in brothels
established in occupied territories.
Historians say some 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery.
Japan acknowledged in the 1990s that its military set up and ran brothels for
its troops, but Japan has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were
settled by postwar treaties.
While refusing to grant compensation, the Tokyo High Court on Wednesday
recognized that the four plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit were taken to
Japanese military bases and repeatedly raped between 1942 and 1944 in Shanxi
Province in north China.
The four women sought 23 million yen (US$219,000). In handing down the
rejection, Presiding Judge Makoto Nemoto admitted that the Japanese military
set up wartime brothels in China and the four plaintiffs were forced by the
military into the brothels.
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China
slams Japan over wartime sex abuse
12-16-2004
Wartime
sex slaves' compensation bid rejected
12-15-2004
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