What a Shame for Taiwan

As a decendent of WWII victim country and a TWN-CN origin, i condemn the Japanese political leaders' visit and tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine each year. To my sad surprise and disappointment, the TWN ex president Lee did the most humilating thing to all the TWN people yesterday for his own political ambition. He does not only damage his own prestige but hugely shame people of TWN. I hope that the incumbant DPP government will react to this event.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20070608TDY02009.htm

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui on Thursday visited Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where his older brother--who died in the Philippines while serving in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II--is enshrined.

Lee told reporters after the visit: "I was with my brother after 62 years. It made me cry."
However, the visit is likely to trigger further criticism from China, as Beijing considers Lee as the representative of Taiwan's independence movement.

Lee, 84, was accompanied by his wife, Tseng Wen-hui, and married writers Shumon Miura and Ayako Sono at the shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals along with other war dead.
At a press conference he gave at a Tokyo hotel before going to the shrine, Lee said there was no political motive for his visit. "[My elder brother and I] got along very well, but we parted 62 years ago in Kaohsiung [in southern Taiwan], and that was it. At our home, there's no hair or bone from my brother--even no plate to remember him," Lee said. "Now, Yasukuni is the only place where he rests."

Lee said after arriving in Japan on May 30: "I can't bear not to visit Yasukuni Shrine and pay tribute, as a brother and out of human nature."
(Jun. 8, 2007)