A Russian government official has expressed opposition to the Memory of the World listing of Japanese files on the postwar internment of prisoners of war in Siberia, saying it is politicizing UNESCO similar to China's move with the Nanjing Massacre documents.
Grigory Ordzhonikidze, secretary-general of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO, indicated that Russia urged Japan not to nominate the documents on the internment of Japanese in the Soviet Union, saying they "oppose bringing political issues" to the U.N. organization, Russia's RIA Novosti news service reported Wednesday.
The Japanese government has been criticizing China for its bid to register materials on the killings of Chinese citizens and soldiers after the 1937 capture of Nanking, as the city was known at the time, by the Japanese military, arguing that Beijing is using UNESCO for political purposes.
Tokyo has said it may consider suspending funding to UNESCO after both the Japanese and Chinese files were listed under the Memory of the World program last week.
Ordzhonikidze said that introducing war-linked documents "opens a Pandora's box" and it was "the Japanese that opened" the box by seeking the nomination of its documents on Siberia internment, according to the report.
The official was quoted as saying that Russia understood that the Nanking incident was a tragedy for the Chinese people but added that "similar events happened in many countries and they need to be addressed bilaterally."
He disputed the suitability of registering war-related events for the UNESCO program for the preservation of historical documents.