Activist says 'thief' China's attitude only strengthens Japanese resolve

A Japanese politician who recently landed on one of the disputed Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea - known as the Senkakus in Japan - accused China yesterday of being "a thief".

He warned that its "insolent and arrogant attitude" will only serve to inspire a new generation of Japanese determined to protect the nation's sovereignty.

Eiji Kosaka, a member of the Arakawa Ward Assembly in Tokyo, was one of 10 Japanese activists who landed on Diaoyu Island - the largest island in the group and known as Uotsuri Island in Japan - on August 19, just days after a group of Hong Kong-based protesters had swum ashore to underline China's claim to the islands.

At a press conference in Tokyo, Kosaka said he hoped his actions would be seen as "a strong statement to the world that this is Japanese territory that was defended by our ancestors' blood, sweat and tears".

He also showed a map produced by the Peking City Map Publishing Company in 1960 that has the islands marked as Japanese territory, a letter from the Chinese government of the 1920s identifying the islands as part of Japan's Okinawa prefecture, and an article in the People's Daily newspaper of January 8, 1953, that similarly states that the islands are Japanese.

"Since the discovery of oil and gas resources under the seabed, China has taken an unreasonable attitude on the basis of fabricated evidence," Kosaka said.