Chinese court backs Massacre survivor in lawsuit against Japanese historians

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - A Chinese court has awarded a Nanjing Massacre survivor 1.6 million yuan ($222,000 Cdn) in compensation after ruling in her favour against two Japanese historians who claimed she fabricated her account of the atrocity, state media said Wednesday. The Xuanwu District Court in the eastern city of Nanjing ruled that Xia Shuqin, who was eight years old at the time of the massacre by Japan's Imperial troops, suffered psychological trauma and damage to her reputation from the allegations by the two Japanese scholars.

Shudo Higashinakano and Toshio Matsumura claimed in two books - A Thorough Review of the Nanjing Massacre and The Big Question of the Nanjing Massacre - that historical accounts of the event were untrue. The books, published in the late 1990s, also asserted that accounts by Xia and another survivor, Li Xiuying, were faked.

An official at the Nanjing court said the verdict requires the two authors and their Japanese publisher to publicly apologize to Xia. The publisher was also ordered to immediately stop publishing the books, said the official, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would not give his name.

In Tokyo, Higashinakano, 58, rejected the court's ruling, saying both Japanese and Chinese law would require the case to be heard in Japan to have any validity.

"The Nanjing court has no jurisdiction to handle this case," he said.

Hiromichi Moteki, president of Sekai Shuppan Inc., which published an English translation of Higashinakano's book, said the demand to stop printing the book was "unthinkable."

"These books are written based on firm facts and evidence," he said. "This ruling lacks common sense."

The Nanjing court official said the defendants had 30 days in which to file an appeal.

Historians generally agree that the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women during the 1937-38 occupation of Nanjing, located about 240 kilometres west of Shanghai.

China says up to 300,000 people were killed in Nanjing during the rampage of murder, rape and looting by invading Japanese troops, also known as the Rape of Nanking.

Japan avoids giving death toll estimates and conservative legislators and academics still try to whitewash the event, fuelling simmering resentment among Chinese over Tokyo's wartime behaviour.

According to Xia, now 76, a group of Japanese soldiers forced their way into her family's home in Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, and killed seven of her family members. Xia and her four-year-old sister were seriously injured but escaped.

According to Chinese media, a U.S. missionary then serving as the chairman of the International Commission of the Red Cross in Nanjing filmed the killings of Xia's family members.

One scene shows Japanese soldiers lining up a dozen Chinese in single file and then firing a rifle point-blank at the first to see how many bodies the bullet would penetrate, the state-run newspaper People's Daily reported.

In 2005, Higashinakano and Matsumura filed a lawsuit against Xia in Tokyo District Court demanding that she acknowledge that her lawsuit in Nanjing was groundless. In May, Xia counter-sued the two men in the same court and the Japanese men dropped their suit.

According to a report by the Chinese news website Sina.com, Xia now plans to file a defamation suit against the two authors next month in Tokyo.

Sino-Japanese relations have hit their lowest level in years, partly because of repeated visits by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a shrine that memorializes Japan's war dead, including executed war criminals from the Second World War.

Koizumi last visited the shrine earlier this month, sparking harsh rebukes from neighbours China and South Korea, who say the shrine glorifies Japanese militaristic past.

© The Canadian Press, 2006