3 Films and Lesson for Humanity

In the past one month, I watched 3 films with setting at different time and space.

One of which is The City of Life and Death (known in Chinese as Nanjing!Nanjing!). This is a story of the Rape of Nanjing. The film tells the story of, among other, a brave Chinese soldier who resisted the Japanese in street fighting following the retreat of his commander. He was eventually arrested and forced to march with thousands of Chinese POW to the Yangze River bank where they were all mercilessly machine-gunned down. This was not war. This was mass murder, masacre of the highest order against POW. The commanding officer of Imperial Army in Nanking then was Prince Asaka who lived a post war live filled with golf and died only in 1980s never was he brought to account for his role.

The films also tell about John Rabe, a German businessman with the Nazi membership who saved many Chinese civilians through setting up the Nanking Safety Zone. In the films, there were also other brave characters who gave their life to save other as well as the unsavoury who tried to save their own by selling out others.

There were also many uneasy scene where the girls were raped and enslaved as the comfort women. I remember from my reading that the girls at Jinling Girl College were mass raped by the Japanese soldiers. We are talking about thousand and thousand of violent sex victims many of whom didn't survive to tell the story.

It always anger me that someone out there, be it the right wing Japanese or the China bashers whatever their nationality, who denied the attrocity simply because they either cannot accept their responsibility or just hold the Chinese in contempt. The latter has their theory that the CCP made up or exagerate the Nanking massacre in order to give its rule the legitimacy. I find this Cold War era theory ludicrous and these peoples are no different from those who denied the Holocaust.

Back to the film, Lu Chuan, the film producer gave a sympathethic portrayal of a Japanese soldier for which he received death threat from the angry Chinese netizens. Again, this show the immaturity of many mainland Chinese who are unable to accept even a slight variant to the standard description of the Imperial Japanese army.

On the other hand, I am very happy to see more diverse perspectives introduced into the film making. What they did is not a revision of the history rather it is a microscopic perspective of a world with unlimited spectrum of characters and possibilities.

With hindsight, largely due to the Cold War, the perpetrator of war crime particularly the Japanese Imperial Family was not brought to justice. Emperor Hirohito was spared. So was Prince Asaka, the commander at the time of the Rape of Nanking.

Nevertheless, this responsibility in granting the immunity to the Imperial Family is largely that of Douglas MacArthur who single-handedly deprieve any notion of justice to the victims in the region and the humanity at large. What MacArthur did was equivalent to installing Hitler as the German Chancellor.

I will call for MacArthur family and the American government (vicarious responsibility) for a formal apology.

Moving on the second film Rwanda Hotel. This is a story of a Hutu hotelier, Paul Rusesabagina, who shielded hundred of Tutsi and moderate Hutu from the Hutu militia during the 1994 genocide in which an estimate of 800000 were killed.

The film blamed the Westen inaction against and the French complicity in arming the Hutu in wiping out the Tutsi. (It is disgusting that the France today are taking a high moral ground on human right)

It is really sad watching the so-called peacekeeper withdrew from a guarded compound full of refugees who minutes later were slaughtered by the advancing Hutu militia.

The conflict traces its root to the colonial era. The racial stereotyping and prejudice are human's greatest folly which is reenacted generation after generation. By the way, Rwanda is very much a Christian country most observers failed to highlight.

One thing strikes me was the role played by the media. In this case, the radio broadcast by the Hutu extremist repeatedly went on to the airwave to call for blood against the cockcroach, a code name for Tutsi. The radio also urged the Hutu to "taste" the Tutsi women.

In those senseless age, I wonder what one would do in those circumstances. Kill your neighbour? Protect your neighbour at the pain of being killed yourself if discovered? Tragically, the 1994 genocide saw many chose to be the latter. Catholic priest included.

Maybe the defence of duress is available but does that exculpate such a large scale of mass killing. Almost every surviving Hutu took part. There is simply no jail big enough to house them. Thus punishment is meted out to the organizer and the militia activist, the rest are rehabilitated in return for admission of guilt.

If this is called justice, this is justice. If one disagree, I could only fan out the message from Gandhi, an eye for en eye make the whole world blind.

The last film is the Reader starring Kate Winslet. It tells a story of a female Nazist who was tried and sentenced for killing the Jews at the Concentration Camp. Actually it was more of a story how a new generation of Germans come to term with the attrocity commited by their kins and loved one.

To a large extent, the German had dealt with the truth of Nazi crime much better than the Japanese. The Rwanda led by the Tutsi today are wise enough to forsake retribution im favour of truth and reconciliation.

As for the Japanese, short of a heartfelt apology from the Japanese emperor, the collective conscience of the Japanese will never be absoved of their involvement and complicity in the most attrocious crime against humanity committed in the region's history.