A Chinese-Malaysian organization issued a statement on Monday, strongly protesting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

Koizumi's repeated visits to the shrine, which enshrines 14 Japanese Class-A war criminals in the Second World War, have gravely hurt the feeling of wartime victims in Asia, the committee for commemoration of war dead during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia said in the statement.

Koizumi, as leader of a country, paid homage to the shrine to whitewash the war criminals, instead of facing the history seriously and repenting of the aggression crimes committed by the Japanese militarists in the past, said the statement.

Wartime victims in Asia have repeatedly expressed their strong dissatisfactions and protests against Koizumi's visit to the shrine, but Koizumi frequently ignored the feeling of neighboring countries and still went on his own way, paying little attention to Japan's relations with other Asian nations, it said.

Koizumi claimed that he paid homage to the shrine in his own name each time when he went there, but it was just a trick to deceive the public, the statement said.

The aggressive war launched by the Japanese militarists in the Second World War brought tremendous pains to Japan's neighbors, a hard fact that could not be forgotten, the committee reiterated.

The Japanese government should face the fact, draw lessons from the history, and educate next generations of Japanese to cherish peace and not to repeat the country's mistake in the past, said the committee.

Source: Xinhua