Commentary: UN mourns war victims to avoid future tragedy in world

The UN General Assembly on Tuesday convened a solemn meeting to commemorate all victims in the World War II, a conflict marking one of the darkest pages in the history of humanity, thus providing an opportunity for the international community to learn the lessons of the past and look forward into the future.

"Untold misery and suffering," "unspeakable atrocities," " brutal scourge" and "tremendous sacrifices" were the phrases uttered at the special General Assembly session at UN Headquarters in New York by speakers from American, African, Asian and European countries when touching upon their own feelings about the war which ended 70 years ago.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War and the founding of the United Nations. As the international community marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, it is also an occasion to objectively learn from history and ways to tackle the challenges of the future.

All these innocent victims -- men, women and children, need to be remembered. Also worth mourning are millions of brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives in fighting fascists for peace in the world.

More than 2 billion people across the globe fell victim to this calamity. In China alone, more than 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians had been left dead or injured by Japanese militarists.

"Tens of millions of civilians died without knowing why they had to die," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday at a UN tree-planting ceremony to remember the countless victims who lost their lives in the Second World War.

Mourning the war dead means a respect for the innocent lives taken away by the tragic event. All these victims, civilians or soldiers, were killed simply because of the war imposed on them by militarists. The war, all of a sudden, disrupted their normal life and engulfed them in an untold catastrophe.

Most of them remain anonymous except for few photos of a smiling young Jewish face in the museum of the Auchwitz concentration camp, a network of termination camp erected by German Nazis in Poland, and countless human skulls found in the aftermath of the Nanjing Massacre staged by Japanese invaders in east China.

China is a key member of the World Anti-Fascist Alliance and a main victorious country of the Second World War. In reality, China was the major battlefield in the East, where the war broke out at the earliest time and endured for the longest period.

China made effective efforts in fighting against the main forces of the Japanese militarism, provided strong support to actions of the Allied Forces in the European and Pacific battlefields, and promoted the formation of the World Anti-Fascist United Front. Indeed, the Chinese people made tremendous sacrifices in resisting aggression, and the Chinese nation made historic contributions to creating peace.

Mourning the war dead demands genuine efforts to learn history by heart. History should be treated as a teacher, and forgetting history means betrayal. The whole world should remain on high alert over any attempt to falsify or distort historical truth.

Looking back on what happened 70 years ago, the historical facts are perfectly clear, and a final verdict has already been pronounced on what was right and what was wrong. Unfortunately, there are still some people in the world who refuse to accept history as it is. History is not to be falsified, and truth is not to be distorted. Those who attempt to deny aggression and distort history will surely have nowhere to hide and achieve nothing.

In fact, having survived the catastrophe of the Second World War, the humankind sought to embrace new means to prevent the recurrence of such a big tragedy. To this end, the United Nations has been established to keep the scourge of those wars from happening again, and the UN Charter had laid out the vision of building a better world.

Therefore, the international community should join hands to uphold human justice and conscience and to defend the UN Charter and the outcomes of the Second World War in order to prevent the recurrence of any world war. Endite