Photo: CFP

China held its ninth national memorial ceremony Tuesday morning for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, serving as a reminder that the massacre that took place 85 years ago in Nanjing should never be forgotten or distorted and militarism in Japan must not be allowed to revive.

On early Tuesday morning, China's national flag was raised and then lowered at half-mast by PLA soldiers atthe Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing, capital city of East China's Jiangsu Province.

The memorial ceremony begun with air-raid sirens blaring throughout Nanjing at exactly 10:01 am. Thousands of people who attended the ceremony and pedestrians paused and observed for a minute of silence and drivers stopped their vehicle and honked.

During the ceremony, teenagestudents read out a declaration of peace to deliver the message of peace and love to the country and the world.

In a speech addressing the ceremony,Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, called the Nanjing Massacre a horrendous crime against humanity and a very dark page in the history of mankind.

China has entered a period of development in which strategic opportunities, risks and challenges are concurrent and uncertainties and unforeseen factors are rising, Cai said, calling for Chinese tomove forward in face of difficulties, coordinate development and security, do the best to overcome all difficulties and challenges on the road ahead.

He also stressed unswervingly commitment to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

When referencing China-Japan relations, Cai said that exchange and cooperation in various fields have yielded fruitful results, bringing important benefits to the two peoples and promoting regional peace, development and prosperity since the normalization of China-Japan relations 50 years ago.

China and Japan should treat each other in a sincere manner, draw on historical experience, grasp the general direction of bilateral relations from a strategic height and build a China-Japan relationship that meets the demands of the new era, Cai added.

Memorial activities were also held at more than a dozen other mass burial sites in Nanjing.

Over 300,000 victims were brutally killed by Japanese troops after the city of Nanjing was captured by Japanese invaders on December 13, 1937.

A total of 1,756 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre were recorded in 1987 when the first statistics were collected. But over time, the number of historical witnesses dwindled substantially. Seven survivors of the massacre have passed away in 2022, leaving the number of registered survivors of the massacre to only 54.

In recent years, the right-wing forces in Japan have constantly distorted and denied history, denied the existence of the Nanjing Massacre, and even attempted to revise the pacifist Constitution, thus undermining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

To commemorate Nanjing Massacre victims on occasion of the ninth NationalMemorial Day, the Crime Evidence Exhibition Hall in the former headquarters of Unit 731 exhibited more than 20,000 new documents, files and historical records to the public following a recently completed renovation project.

Jin Chengmin, the exhibit's curator, said the new exhibition is acquired from archaeological excavations, cross-border investigations and academic research since 2015, which offers new evidence of the Unit 731 conducting its crimes of conducting human experiments, developing bacteriological weapons and carrying out germ warfare.

Global Times