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Building up trust between Japan and Asia: Symposium on postwar compensation

As part of the efforts to establish peace and human rights in the 21st century, a symposium was held on February 9 in Tokyo with over 100 people attending. The discussion focused on redress and remorse over Japan's misdeeds in the past war in Asia.

The League to Demand State Compensation for Maintenance of Public Order Law organized the symposium.

Laywer Nemoto Kouei explained that to defend the "national polity" at that time, the Maintenance of Public Order Law expanded repression on anti-war activists. Under the name of "national polity," the notorious law was used as a tool to suppress the nationalist movements on the Korean Peninsula, which was under Japan's colonial rule.

Onodera Toshitaka, an attorney for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit demanding state reparations for Chinese victims of militarist Japan, stressed the need to develop correct historical perspectives and achieve a national agreement concerning postwar reparations. In so doing, trust between Japan and the rest of Asian nations and lasting peace will be set up, he said.

Panelist Niikura Osamu, professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, said there is no justifiable reason for the United States to launch a war against Iraq and a war would violate modern international agreements centering on equal sovereignty and nonintervention in domestic affairs.

* The League to Demand State Compensation for Victims of Public Order Maintenance Law was founded in 1968 to tell of the tragedy of the law and lessons learned from the atrocity to next generations. The league also works for a law concerning national compensation to the victims to be enacted.

* The Public Order Maintenance Law was enforced between 1925 and October 1945, a law to repress people and make them obey the Emperor System ideology with the absolute power of Tenno. 194 people were killed by torture, 1,503 died in prison, and several hundred thousand people were arrested. (end)