PETALING JAYA: Japan never paid RM207bil to the Malaysian Government
as compensation for victims of the Death Railway project in the 1940s,
according to the Japanese Embassy.
Its Second Secretary Takaharu Suegami, responding to PAS working committee member Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin
who was reported to have said so, said the latter's claim was “outside
the involvement and knowledge of the Government of Japan”.
“All
questions arising out of the unhappy events with regard to Malaysia have
been fully and finally settled under the San Francisco Treaty which
entered into force in 1952,” he said in a statement yesterday. Nizar was
quoted by Harakah Daily as saying that the embassy had confirmed that the money was handed to the Malaysian Government in 2004.
The
report stated that the money had yet to be distributed to families of
the estimated 30,000 Malaysians who were forced labourers of the project
between 1942 and 1946.
Suegami said both countries had also
signed an agreement on Sept 21, 1967, whereby Japan agreed to supply
services and products to Malaysia totalling RM25mil.
The grants,
he said, had been used to build two ships, among other projects, but
there was no transfer of an undisclosed amount of money.
“Malaysia
agreed that any question from the events of the Second World War that
might affect our good bilateral relations would be fully and finally
settled with the agreement.
“All the supply in accordance with the agreement was completed by May 6, 1972,” he said.
- The Star/Asian News Network
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Japan, the deputy sheriff in Asia?
1 comment:
Japan is abnormal, the country’s debt is more than 200% of its GDP, still occupied by American troops, still making troubles with its neighbors, right-wingers militarism are back again, now the deputy sheriff in Asia?
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