NDP Call for Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day Receives Support From Community Leaders

OTTAWA – This December 13th will mark the 81st anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. In recognition of the atrocities experienced by victims and in the spirit of "never again’', NDP Critic for Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Jenny Kwan, tabled a petition in the House of Commons signed by nearly forty thousand Canadians calling on the Liberal government to declare December 13 as Nanjing Massacre Commemorative day. Among those joining the call for action are prominent Japanese Canadians like author Joy Kogawa and Peace Philosophy Centre Founder Satoko Norimatsu.

"The commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre is about the formal recognition of atrocities, learning from history, and paying tribute to those impacted. If we can learn from history and commit ourselves to preventing it from happening again, humanity benefits," said Kwan. “The treatment of Yazidi women in Northern Iraq shows that large-scale, systemic sexual violence continues to be used as a tactic to assert power, dominance, and to dehumanize people and attack their identity. We must recognize these atrocities now, and act to end those that are currently underway.”

It is estimated that that as many as 300,000 people were killed in the Nanjing massacre. Another 200,000 women and girls from Korea, China, Japan, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other occupied territories in Asia were tricked, kidnapped, or coerced by the Japanese Imperial Army into sexual slavery, serving as ‘comfort women’. Eye-witnesses described the atrocities as ‘hell on earth.’ Currently, the United Nations recognizes 19 countries in conflict where sexual violence is used as a weapon of war.

“In an age of increasing xenophobia and historical revisionism, Jenny Kwan’s work assumes a new urgency to align ourselves with the world’s historians and to guard against revisionists, equivocators and deniers of history who attempt to falsify and sanitize the past,” added Joy Kowaga, Order of Canada recipient, and recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun. “Our humanity depends on recognizing our capacity for barbarity."