Nanjing seeks Unesco listing for massacre documents
China has applied to Unesco for inclusion of documents related to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in a move seen as a response to Japan's request to add kamikaze pilots' letters
Documents related to the Nanjing Massacre are being submitted for inclusion on a Unesco list by authorities in the Chinese city, state media reported on Thursday, after uproar over a Japanese bid to include suicide pilots’ farewell letters.
According to the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post, it is the third time that Nanjing has submitted the documents for inclusion in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco)’s Memory of the World Register, which also includes such items as the diary of Anne Frank and Britain’s Magna Carta.
The cache includes documents related to the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in the eastern Chinese city, where Tokyo’s imperial forces went on a six-week spree of rape, slaughter and destruction from December 1937. Estimates of the dead range as high as 300,000 people, although some are much lower.
The papers also include files on the use of “comfort women” forced into sex slavery by Japanese troops, the newspaper said.
Relations between Beijing and Tokyo are heavily coloured by their shared history, and tensions have escalated amid a row over disputed islands controlled by Japan but claimed by China.
