A group of survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, relatives of massacre victims, and experts gathered in Nanjing yesterday to protest against Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's weekend visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

The gathering was held at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.

Koizumi's second visit to the shrine has been strongly criticized by Asian people including the Japanese people, said Wang Weixing, deputy director of the Historical Institute of the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

Whenever top Japanese politicians visit the shrine for whatever reason, it is seen as commemorating war criminals and as supporting Japan's past war of aggression, Wang said. It is a betrayal of the cause of peace and justice as well as of international moral and ethical codes, he stressed.

Li Xiuying, an 84-year old victim of the massacre, pointed to the scars on her face and said: "These are the scars from 37 slashes made by Japanese soldiers and we will never forget the bloody history of the war."

Li criticized the Japanese prime minister and Japanese right-wingers who have used every means to deny the facts of the massacre, during which Japanese troops killed 300,000 Chinese people in Nanjing.

Also yesterday, Hong Kong trade union groups staged a protest against Koizumi's visit. Dozens of members from leading labour unions, shouting slogans denouncing Japanese wartime atrocities in China, marched to the Japanese consulate to deliver a letter denouncing Koizumi's visit.

(China Daily April 23, 2002)