China protesters slam Japan court ruling denying payment to WWII slave laborers

Demonstrators gathered outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Thursday to protest a court ruling denying compensation to five Chinese forced to work as slave laborers in Hiroshima during World War II.

About 30 protesters carried banners and chanted slogans against the April 27 decision by Japan's Supreme Court, which ruled that the workers at a Japanese construction company had no right to seek war compensation because of a 1972 agreement with China.

The court's ruling also suggested that the Nishimatsu Construction Co. voluntarily atone for its actions.

"The Japanese government must compensate!" shouted the crowd, which was made up of former laborers and their relatives. The reason behind the timing of the protest or whether the plaintiffs were in the crowd was not immediately clear.

Police cordoned off the area and about half a dozen officers stood guard outside the embassy. There were no signs of confrontation.

Some 40,000 Chinese were taken to Japan in the early 1940s to work as slave laborers, mostly in coal mines and ports, including about 360 at the Nishimatsu company. Tens of thousands of others from Asian countries were also wartime slave laborers.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said she was not aware of the protest Thursday but urged the Japanese side to take "serious consideration of the legitimate rights and the demand by the Chinese laborers and their families."

The five plaintiffs _ three survivors and two family members representing men who have since died _ said they were brought over by Japan's military in July 1944 and forced to work for Nishimatsu as virtual slaves at a power plant construction site in Hiroshima until the war ended a year later.

The men said they were barely fed and forced to work over 12 hours a day without pay or medical care.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs wanted Nishimatsu to pay a total of 27.5 million yen (US$230,000; euro169,000) in compensation for their suffering.

A Japanese high court ruling in 2004 ordered the company to pay, but the company appealed the decision.

In its April ruling, the Supreme Court said the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communique, in which Beijing abandoned its right to claim war reparations from Japan, makes it impossible for Chinese individuals to seek wartime compensation from Japan.