By Wang Cong and Ren Qinqin (
Xinhua) 07:17, August 12, 2014
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Comments twitter facebook Sina Microblog reddit A Chinese group has asked Japan to return a 1,300-year-old stone stele looted byJapanese soldiers early last century from northeastern China.
In a letter addressed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and the Japanese government onSunday via the Japanese Embassy in China, the China Federation of DemandingCompensation from Japan (CFDC) said the Honglujing Stele, which documents China'sendorsement of the first king of the Bohai Kingdom (698-926) in 713 A.D., should behanded back to China as soon as possible.
CFDC president Tong Zeng told Xinhua on Monday that so far the federation has not yetreceived any reply from Japanese authorities.
This is the first time a Chinese civic group has asked the Japanese imperial family for thereturn of a looted Chinese relic.
About three meters wide, 1.8 meters tall and two meters thick, the Honglujing Stele showsthat the first king of the Bohai Kingdom was conferred the title by an emperor of China'sTang Dynasty (618-907).
The stele was originally placed in Lushun in northeast China's Liaoning Province, but nowsits in virtual seclusion in the Japanese imperial palace after the Japanese army shippedthe stele to Japan in 1908 as a wartime "trophy." Lushun was controlled by Russia beforethe war.
Established in 2006, the CFDC seeks compensation for personal, material and spiritualdamage caused by Japanese militarism during the country's aggression against China in the20th century.
According to Wang Jinsi, a CFDC director in charge of recovering cultural relics, theHonglujing Stele is one of the most important relics taken from China to Japan in lastcentury.
The stele is but one of the many ancient antiquities looted by Japanese soldiers duringtheir military aggression in China.
Earlier reports said Japanese soldiers took home some 3.6 million relics from China andransacked some 740 relic sites during the five decades between the first Sino-JapaneseWar in 1894 and Japan's World War II defeat in 1945.
"These historic relics, which belong to China but now lie in Japan, have done great damageto Sino-Japanese ties," said Wang. "They should be returned to their rightful owner."
Wang said the CFDC plans to send an expert team to Japan to further pressure Japaneseauthorities on the return of the stele.
"If that does not work either, we will have to learn from our international counterparts andhave our government step in," he said.
Japan handed over Bukgwandaecheopbi (meaning "monument for the great victory atBukgwan"), an 18th-century stone stele commemorating a series of Korean militaryvictories against the invading army of Japan in the 1590s, to the Republic of Korea in 2005after repeated requests by official authorities and civic groups.
CFDC president Tong Zeng said a number of Chinese experts have spent years gatheringevidence of Japan's looting of the Honglujing Stele and its current location in order to makeway for its return.
"What we try to recover is not just the relic itself, but also a symbol of internationaljustice," he said.
Meanwhile, news of the CFDC request has gone viral on Chinese social networks withhundreds of thousands of reposts and comments in a day.
One read, "You have to start with concrete things when it comes to Japan if you want toget back what is rightfully ours. We don't need slogans but concrete actions."
"To correct the wrong, the only right thing for Japan to do is to return the relic now,"another read.
(Editor:Gao Yinan、Bianji)
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