Petition tries to thwart Tokyo's Olympics bid over war crimes

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Members of the delegation of Tokyo 2020 make their presentation bid in Switzerland on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:13am, 4 Jul 2013Updated: 7:02am, 5 Jul 2013

An online petition urging the International Olympics Committee not to select Tokyo - one of the three finalists to host the 2020 Summer Games - has collected more than 24,000 signatures since its creation in March.

The signatures come from all over the world, but the website shows that a majority were submitted by residents from South Korea, whose immigrants in Japan recently saw a spate of racial violence.

The petition also managed to garner signatures from mainland Chinese after it was reported by China’s Global Times this week. It was later reposted by several other media outlets.

The petition reads: “67 years have elapsed since the end of WWII. The Japanese government still has not officially acknowledged and apologised for the massive and inhumane atrocities that the Japanese Imperial Army inflicted on Asia during WWII.” It urges Japan to recognise its war crimes including the Nanking Massacre and forcing hundreds of thousands of women into sexual slavery.

Japan, which hosted the Summer Games in 1964, is in the running again, competing against Istanbul and Madrid to host the 2020 Olympics. The cities made their presentations to the governing committee in Lusanne, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The decision will be announced in September.

“In light of the Japanese government and her leaders' continued denial of what happened in Asia during World War II, we thought we must see what else we can do so that Japan will recognise history,” said the creator of the petition, Don Tow, a Chinese American physicist who lives in New Jersey, US.

Among the comments from those who signed the petition, many demanded an apology from Japan.