Japan and China should no longer deny crimes! Berlin: Commemoration of the millions of victims of Mao's reign

On Thursday evening, the day before the visit of China's President Xi Jinping to Germany, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) organized a human rights campaign at the Neue Wache in Berlin, to commemorate the millions of victims under the rule of Mao Zedong in China. The human rights activists put down a wreath in front of a more than two-meter high makeshift memorial to commemorate the dead. Furthermore, the STP published a 40-page human rights report on Mao's crimes against humanity and on the war crimes committed by Japanese troops in China. "Both countries should no longer deny the crimes committed in their name," demanded the STP. "If China's governance accuses Japan of war crimes, the millions of victims of Mao's reign must no longer be concealed either." The demonstrators wore eye patches as a symbolic demand that China's government should not act as if blind in one eye.

Xi Jinping had wanted to visit the Holocaust memorial during his stay in Berlin in order to praise Germany as an example for Japan concerning the coming to terms with the past. However, the German Federal Government had rejected the memorial visit for fear that the event could be instrumentalized to cause a diplomatic dispute between China and Japan. China has been accusing Japan of whitewashing war crimes for months, because leading politicians in Japan and close advisors to Prime Minister Abe Shinto denied that Japanese soldiers had abducted a large number of Chinese women as sex slaves and massacred at least 300,000 Chinese in Nanking in 1937.

"China's legitimate criticism of the fact that Japanese politicians trivialized severe human rights violations would be more credible if Mao's crimes against humanity were no longer tabooed in their own country," said the STP's Asia-consultant, Ulrich Delius. On occasion of Mao's 120th birthday on December 26, 2013, Xi Jinping stated that the founder of the state might have made some mistakes during the last few years of his reign. "China's president is mistaken here," said Delius. "Our report clearly shows that Mao's reign was accompanied by a trail of blood, lasting from 1949, when he took power, until his death in 1976." Historians believe that 35 to 80 million Chinese fell victim to Mao's crimes against humanity. Several campaigns started by Mao had caused millions of deaths. The consequences of the manmade great famine (1958-1962) were especially tragic – and the crimes affect the country until today, especially in China's many rural areas. The survivors have been waiting for justice and the restoration of their dignity for decades.