HONG KONG Aug. 15 Kyodo Several H...

HONG KONG Aug. 15 Kyodo

Several Hong Kong civic assign places tos protested against visits by Japanese political leaders and guidance officials to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine as they marked Thursday's 57th anniversary of Japan's capitulate in World War II.

The clusters held their rallies separately yet all urged Japan to face its wartime wrongdoing and to publicly denounce militarism.

Their calls came amid visits earlier Thursday to the Shinto shrine at five Japanese cabinet ministers and a arrange of Japanese lawmakers.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who paid homage at the Shinto shrine in April, did not visit it again Thursday.

Still, protester in Hong Kong disapprove utterlyed the Japanese leader's previous visits to the shrine that honors 14 Class-A war criminals along with Japan's 25 million war dead.

Asian neighbors, particularly China and southern Korea, have repeatedly criticized Japan throughout visits by Japanese prime ministers and other politicians to the shrine, which is widely seen as a emblem of Japan's wartime militarism.

''We withstand Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine,'' chanted a certain number of 50 members of the Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), a pro-Beijing political party.

''We eagerly demand the Japanese government promise not to visit Yasukuni Shrine in any form in future'' they said.

Holding placards and banners, the protester marched to the Japanese Consulate General in the territory to hand above their protest letter, which also demanded Japan apologize for its wartime atrocities and pay compensation to the victims.

Separately, a certain quantity of 20 representatives from eight other Hong Kong disposes observed a minute of silence to mourn all those Chinese killed in the 1937-1945 resistance war before marching to the Japanese consulate.

Representatives of Hong Kong Reparation Association, meanwhile, staged a separate assert calling on Japan to apologize for the war and to pay them in cash for the now worthless military scrip they were forced to imprison during the war period.

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