MCLC: activists arrested on Diaoyu

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: activists arrested on Diaoyu
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Source: The Guardian (8/15/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/15/china-japan-disputed-islands-ac
tivists

China demands Japan release activists arrested on gas-rich disputed islands
Tension over islands reaches new high, while row with Seoul reveals
Tokyo's unresolved wartime tensions with neighbours
By Reuters in Hong Kong

China has urged Japan to immediately and unconditionally release 14
activists who planted the Chinese flag on a disputed island that has long
been a source of tension between the two Asian powers.

Fourteen activists from China, Hong Kong and Macau travelled by boat to
the group of islands, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in China, on
the emotionally charged anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of the
second world war. Five were arrested on the islands, and nine others
detained on their boat, Japan's coastguard said earlier.

In discussions with Japanese officials, Chinese vice-foreign minister, Fu
Ying, demanded that Japan ensure the safety of the 14 Chinese nationals
and immediately and unconditionally release them, the Chinese foreign
ministry said on its website.

Fu also "made solemn representations on Japan's unlawful detention of
Chinese nationals on the Diaoyu Islands", the ministry website said.

Japan protested to China's ambassador over the activists' landing and the
prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, said Tokyo would deal with the matter
strictly in accordance with the law.

China's Xinhua state news agency said Japan had pushed tension "to a new
high".

"The tensions are fully due to irresponsible clamouring and attempts by
some Japanese politicians and activists to claim the islands, which ...
indisputably belong to China," it said.

Friction over the uninhabited isles, which are near potentially rich gas
deposits, had already been heating up.

Several of the activists jumped into the sea, swam and waded ashore. The
group said its boat had been rammed by the coastguard and hit with water
cannon. A Japanese official denied that any serious damage had been done
to the boat.

Chinese media published photographs of the activists planting the
country's flag on a rocky shore. "We've waited 10 years for this. We
finally managed to get ashore," the captain of the protest ship was quoted
as saying on Hong Kong television.

A separate row over rival claims by South Korea and Japan to other rocky
islands has also intensified, signalling how the region has failed to
resolve differences nearly seven decades after Japan's defeat at the end
of the second world war.

The friction in part reflects scepticism over the sincerity of Japan's
apologies for wartime and colonial excesses.

On Tuesday, South Korea's Lee Myung-bak told a group of teachers that
Emperor Akihito should apologise sincerely if he wanted to visit South
Korea, saying a repeat of his 1990 expression of "deepest regrets" would
not suffice.

Japan, noting that it had never broached the idea of a visit by the
emperor to South Korea, lodged a protest with Seoul over the remarks.
Akihito has spent much of the past two decades trying to heal the wounds
of a war waged in his father's name.

Lee, whose visit on Friday to the island claimed by South Korea and Japan
frayed ties between the two US allies, called Japan an "important partner
that we should work with to open the future".

But in remarks commemorating Korea's liberation from Japan's colonial rule
between 1910 and 1945, he also said the countries' tangled history was
"hampering the common march toward a better tomorrow."

He urged Japan to do more to resolve a dispute over compensation for
Korean women abducted to serve as sex slaves for wartime Japanese
soldiers, known by the euphemism "comfort women" in Japan and long a
source of friction.

"It was a breach of women's rights committed during wartime as well as a
violation of universal human rights and historic justice. We urge the
Japanese government to take responsible measures in this regard," Lee said.

Japan says the matter was closed under a 1965 treaty establishing
diplomatic ties. In 1993, Tokyo issued a statement in the name of its
then-chief cabinet secretary apologising to the women and two years later
set up a fund to make payments to the women, but South Korea say those
moves were not official and so not enough.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the war's end in Japan on Wednesday, Noda
acknowledged the "enormous damage and suffering" caused by Japan to other
countries, especially in Asia.

"We deeply reflect upon [that] and express our deepest condolences to the
victims and their families," he said, vowing that Japan would never go to
war again.