Tokyo withholds its annual contribution to UNESCO
Baku, October 14 AZERTAC
Japan is withholding its annual contribution to UNESCO in an apparent protest over files on the Nanking Massacre being added to the organization’s Memory of the World Register last year.
According to Yahoo, This year’s Japanese share was calculated at 3.85 billion yen ($37 million). Tokyo is effectively the biggest contributor.
According to a Foreign Ministry official, Tokyo has not paid about 550 million yen it has promised at its discretion for a project to restore Angkor Wat, part of the UNESCO’s World Heritage-listed Angkor complex in Cambodia.
Japan blamed the registration system for not considering its views in the evaluation process.
Tokyo and Beijing dispute the number of Chinese killed by Japanese troops in Nanking, now called Nanjing, in late 1937 and 1938.
This year, Japan’s share was 9.6 percent, the second largest after the United States.
The UNESCO Memory of the World Register was established in 1992 with the aim of preserving historical documents.
For this year, groups from Japan, China, South Korea and other countries applied to have archives on wartime “comfort women” registered for the Memory of the World Register.
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