'International treaty wall' unveiled in Unit 731 Museum

HARBIN - As the 18th International Museum Day arrived Friday, an "international treaty wall" was unveiled in the Unit 731 Museum in Harbin, capital of northeastern China's Heilongjiang.

At the site of Japan's biological and chemical warfare research base during World War II, the 30 meter-long and 10 meter-high display wall, themed "International treaties prohibiting use of biochemical weapons," lists treaties signed to ban biological weapons.

Jin Chengmin, curator of the museum, told Xinhua that all the treaties set out legal bases for the charges against Japan's biological weapons troops for using germ warfare, conducting bacteria experiments on Chinese victims and attacking civilians with fatal war tools in battle as well as releasing plagues.

From the Hague Declaration concerning the prohibition of the use of projectiles with the sole object to spread asphyxiating poisonous gases, signed in the Hague in 1899, to the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, signed in Geneva in 1949, some 1,000 characters on the wall present international treaties regarding biochemical weapons bans in the first half of the 20th century.

Jin said the display wall was designed for visitors to look at the war from the perspective of legal theories, by giving intangible laws a physical symbol.

The museum, which occupies an area of 11,000 square meters inside the remnants of Unit 731, was established to mourn the loss of life and humanity within its walls.

It exhibits photos and first-hand testimonies of the imperialist Japanese army's research, development and use of germ warfare and human-body experiments, as well as the final war-crimes trial.