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Japan withholds annual UNESCO dues over world memory listing

Xinhua, October 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Japan has been withholding this year's financial contributions to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) totaling some 4.4 billion yen (42 million U.S. dollars), Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has confirmed.

Kishida said the decision was made after weighing the matter in a "comprehensive" manner, though many analysts here pointed out that the move came after the U.N. body's decision last year to list Chinese documents relating to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre as a Memory of the World.

The invading Japanese military brutally killed over 300,000 Chinese including defenseless civilians and unarmed soldiers following the capture of Nanjing in 1937. Japan has been trying to whitewash its atrocities by claiming that the number of killed was not as many as 300,000.

Japan's decision to withhold the dues was also reportedly aimed at putting pressure on UNESCO, at a time when an international alliance of civic organizations is bidding to have over 2,700 "comfort women"-related documents listed as a Memory of the World.

Many women were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, most of whom were from Asian countries. They were called "comfort women." Endit