Hongkongers find own ways to remember Rape of Nanking

Veterans, government officials and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong found their own ways to mark the 77th anniversary of the rape of Nanking yesterday, when Beijing held its first official national memorial day.

The government took its cue from Beijing, with Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and his ministers paying their respects at the city's first official memorial ceremony.

Also present for the ceremony at the Museum of Coastal Defence were former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li and Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing.

Leung laid a wreath and the guests observed a two-minute silence for those who died in the 1937 massacre.

Also in attendance were about 50 veterans of the Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Brigade, a guerilla force under the Communist party that fought the Japanese occupiers in the city. There were also about a dozen Chinese veterans of the British military.

"It is an honour for us. Before the handover, the colonial government never recognised our role in the war to defend Hong Kong," said Steven Wong Muk-lin, 82, who was an underground messenger for the Communist brigade at the age of just 10.