In an effort to inform the world on the subject of the germ warfare carried out by the Japanese in China between 1931 and 1945, a former UN biological weapons inspector has mounted a campaign on the subject. 

German biologist and former weapons inspector with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Jan van Aken has just completed a four-day research tour which started on June 8 and saw him visit war crime sites in China.

"I was astonished at the fact that the Chinese victims of Japanese biological weapons have suffered so much in the past 60 years," said the Hamburg University biologist.
 
"However, very few people know this fact and it's essential for more people to know the history of inhumanity so as to prevent similar tragedies," van Aken said in Yiwu City, east China's Zhejiang Province.
 
Van Aken has visited Quzhou, Jinhua, and Yiwu, in Zhejiang, to collect evidence of germ warfare. He was accompanied by his assistant, Matthias Ziegler and WangXuan, head of the Plaintiffs Delegation of Chinese War Victims. They've lobbied for compensation from the Japanese government and assisted in lawsuits. 

Van Aken said he would file the findings of his investigation with the sixth deliberation meeting of United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons and their Destruction to be held in Geneva in November. He would also publicize Japanese germ warfare crimes to the world via the Internet and international media.

"My nine-year-old younger brother suffered so much that he kept scratching the bed board with his bleeding hands," said Wu Shigen, a citizen of Quzhou, who escaped the atrocities. He explained to van Aken how his younger brother and sister died of the plague in 1942.
 
Qiu Mingxuan, a former head of Quzhou Health and Epidemic Prevention Station, has investigated Japanese germ warfare allegations for years. He discovered that more than 50,000 people in Quzhou died from plague between 1940 and 1948.
 
At Caojie Village of Jinhua, 70-year-old villager Dai Zhaokai rolled up his trousers and revealed to van Aken the yellowish-white scars of anthrax and answered van Aken's questions about his infection.
 
Later, van Aken went to Chongshan Village of Yiwu to research the claims of human experiments and vivisection.
 
Wang Peigen, secretary-general of the Plaintiffs Delegation, said 403 people in the village were victims of germ warfare in 1942. "The Japanese captured villagers infected with plague and pulled out their internal organs to make bacteria bombs," Wang said. "The old villagers still remember the screams." 

Van Aken and Ziegler said they were overwhelmed by the evidence. "It's hard to express my feelings," said van Aken. "On the one hand it's distressing to see the long-lasting torture Japanese germ warfare brought to the Chinese people but on the other I'm grateful that Wang Xuan and the others are the living evidence of what happened."
 
"Through this investigation I believe the Japanese did practice germ warfare," said van Aken. "This is a fact and not a theory." He said a wider knowledge of the story might help prevent future tragedies.
 
Wang Xuan said, "This investigation has reinforced our determination to carry out lawsuits against the Japanese for their atrocities to the end." Since August 1997 the Plaintiffs' Delegation has been appealing for the Japanese government to apologize and compensate victims.

Studies by Chinese and foreign scholars have shown that between 1931 and 1945, Japanese troop Unit 731 with its human biological weapons laboratory and other units repeatedly practiced germ warfare in China.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2006)