Ghosts of Asian disasters

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe (pictured), made an interesting appointment as a governor of the country’s NHK broadcasting organisation. Naoki Hyakuta has declared that Japan’s massacre of up to 350,000 civilians in the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937 never happened.

Mr Hyakuta has also written a best-selling novel, now turned into a film, glorifying Japan’s kamikaze pilots of World War Two. China and South Korea, which also suffered dreadfully at Japan’s hands, are both angry.


Ghosts are walking in Indonesia too. The Act of Killing, a film about the mass slaughter that accompanied the birth of President Suharto’s dictatorship in the mid-1960’s, has won a BAFTA award for best documentary. Perhaps half a million people were killed by death squads.

In 2012, the country’s human rights commission urged President Yudhoyono to make a formal apology, and called for the killers to be prosecuted. But the president, a former general, is the son-in-law of the then head of the army’s special forces, who was deeply implicated in the massacre, and the report has been largely ignored.

Haiti 4 years on - recovery stalled

Four years to the day after the devastating Haiti earthquake that killed perhaps a quarter of a million people, the government is facing heavy criticism over the slow pace of reconstruction.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the cathedral and the presidential palace still lie in ruins. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe said last week he was going to ‘press on the accelerator’, but the opposition accused the government of failing to implement the recovery plan negotiated with foreign donors.

Both parties agree, though, that a lot of the money went on emergency aid rather than rebuilding, and they also say that some of the promised funds never arrived. Mr Lamothe has asked for a further $9bn in aid.

Nearly 200,000 people are still living in very poor conditions in temporary shelters, while anti-government protests have been growing.

*A Spanish website has reproduced the section on the Rape of Nanking from my Historia mundial de los desastres (A Disastrous History of the World) -

http://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/historia/489426-masacre-de-nanking.html

State of denial - Japan and war crimes

A Chinese-Japanese judo event due to have been held in the Chinese city of Nanjing has been cancelled following a Japanese politician’s denial of his country’s notorious ‘Rape of Nanjing’ in 1937.    The Mayor of Nagoya, Takashi Kawamura, said only "conventional acts of combat" had taken place.

Nanjing and Nagoya were twinned in 1978, but now the Chinese have suspended all exchanges between the two cities.    This is the latest in a series of remarks by leading Japanese politicians that indicate a reluctance to face up to the crimes committed by the country during World War Two.

The Japanese took Nanjing in December 1937.   Women and girls aged 10 to 80 were abducted for systematic rape and usually murder, civilians were shot down in the street, captured soldiers were burned alive or tied up and used for bayonet practice, or ripped to pieces by dogs.   Others were machine-gunned, beheaded, or buried alive.

In just a few weeks in December 1937 and January 1938, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, reckoned the Japanese killed more than 260,000 non-combatants in the city, though some believe the real number was 350,000.   For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Haiti one year on

It’s a year since the disastrous Haiti earthquake killed a quarter of a million people, and twelve months on, the pace of reconstruction has been disappointing, with at least 800,000 people still living in temporary shelters. This is a particular nightmare for the women and girls who live in the camps, as rape and sexual assault are daily occurrences.

With so many people finding it hard to get access to clean water, 3,500 have died of cholera over recent months, and political deadlock has made the situation worse. There were complaints of fraud and intimidation in November’s indecisive elections, and the second round has still not been held.

Last March, international donors promised more than £1.25 billion, but by the end of last month, nearly 40 per cent of that had still not been spent. Former US President, Bill Clinton, now a UN envoy to the country, admitted his frustration, but said he hoped the pace would now pick up.

*Now you can follow me on Facebook:- http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/pages/Disaster-historian/166380310063983