Nine people injured by WWII chemical weapons left by the Japanese army in China are leaving to take a petition to Tokyo this Friday, accompanied by lawyers from both countries.

"Our aim is to urge the Japanese government to give better treatment to these victims and step up its efforts to dispose of chemical weapons Japanese troops left in China," Luo Lijuan, one of the Chinese lawyers in the delegation, told China Daily, "What we want to see is a change in their attitude towards this event."

In August 2003, five barrels of mustard gas were dug up at a construction site in Qiqihar, in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. The ensuing gas leak killed one and injured 43 others, one of the worst accidents involving abandoned Japanese WWII chemical weapons in China.

Luo said they will try to present a detailed report of the tragedy to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on August 4, the second anniversary of the incident.

According to her, the detailed medical records of all 43 survivors constitute a key part of the report. "Although most of the victims had left hospital two months after the event, all of them are still suffering symptoms and many have to occasionally return to hospital for treatment."

"The victims' skin burned after contact with the gas," she said, "A slight touch of the healed wound may trigger bleeding and may further infect other parts of the body."

Among the nine petitioners, Wang Cheng, 25, a worker at a refuse recycling station, is said to be the most severely injured -- large areas of skin on his lower limbs are necrotic and he is unable to have children.

"At 1.7-metre-tall, he weighs only 36 kilograms," Luo said, adding that the toes of another survivor, Ding Shuwen, 27, a construction worker, became webbed after exposure to the gas.

Three others in the delegation, Feng Jiayuan, Gao Ming and Chen Ziwei, were affected by the leak while playing barefooted on their school playground. "Their feet become red and swollen on rainy or hot days," Luo said.

The report is the result of a two-year joint effort in which Chinese lawyers collected evidence and Japanese lawyers wrote the report and dealt with legal procedures.

After pressure from the Chinese government, the Japanese government agreed to give the victims 21.9 million yuan (US$2.7 million) to cover medical expenses in October 2003, but not to compensate them for culpability in the incident.

Luo said the report did not include a demand for a specific amount of compensation, but that they hoped they would be compensated. "If this fails, we will launch a lawsuit."

Bu Ping, a Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences researcher, estimated that over 2 million chemical munitions could have been abandoned across China at the end of WWII, though the Japanese government estimates the figure to be 700,000.

Around 2,000 people are thought to have been injured by them as their metal casings corrode and start to leak and as they are unearthed by construction work.

Under the UN Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in April 1997, Japan has until 2007 to destroy all the chemical weapons its troops left in China. In 1999, Japan promised to provide funding, technology, personnel and facilities needed to scrap them, but little progress has been made.

(China Daily July 26, 2005)