Nanjing Massacre: Hong Kong school faces backlash after students shown graphic footage

The incident came after the Education Bureau called on local schools to run activities commemorating the massacre in a directive last month, reports The Guardian.

The Po Leung Kuk Hong Kong Taoist Association Yuen Yuen primary school showed footage of executions and corpses during the Nanjing massacre to its youngest pupils during a class on moral and civic education, the newspaper reported, quoting local media inputs.

The five-minute clip, which was pulled from an RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) documentary on the massacre showing Japanese soldiers executing civilians, and piles of corpses, including babies, was included in the Education Bureau’s suggested teaching materials for commemorating the massacre, The Guardian reported.

Photos of Nanjing Massacre survivors at Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in China. Image by Kevin Dooley via Wikimedia Creative Commons

The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as Nanking) was the mass-scale random murder, wartime rape, looting and arson committed by the Imperial Japanese Army against the residents of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Beginning on December 13, 1937, these Japanese war crimes lasted from three to six weeks depending on the types of crime, while the first three weeks were more intense.

The death toll of the Nanjing Massacre was estimated from 40,000 to over 300,000.