CHINA's Supreme Court announced that Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) has paid JPY2.92 billion (US$28.5 million) in fees and damages as well as CNY2.4 million (US$385,000) in legal costs to free its ship from a Shanghai Maritime Court seizure in a case that dates back to 1937.
The 226,434-dwt bulk carrier, the Baosteel Emotion, has been seized in lieu of payment for two ships that were chartered to a forerunner of the Japanese shipping giant in 1936 and disappeared in the war that started a year later.
The court also sparked a renewal of a campaign to make Japan pay for wartime misdeeds. Championing the court seizure of the Baosteel Emotion is the Chinese Federation of Demanding Compensation From Japan headed by Tong Zeng, who has led a campaign for wartime compensation from Japan.
Deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations have been fuelled by a dispute over a chain of islands in the East China Sea, which have worsened since China's creation of an air defence zone and the Japanese prime minister honouring war criminals.
Mr Tong said there were a dozen cases either in courts or about to be filed with many more expected down the line. "This is just the beginning," said Mr Tong, who has helped advise the plaintiffs in the ship case.
This case began with a pre-World War II contract between China's then "ship king" and a Japanese company to lease two Chinese freighters, said Reuters. When the one-year lease was up in 1937, the ships disappeared in the fog of war.
Later it was discovered that one ship hit a reef and sank in 1938 while the other was destroyed by a mine in 1944, reported Xinhua.
Beijing says the case as a simple business dispute without links to wartime compensation, but it has become a rallying point for those seeking financial reparations from Japan for wartime misdeeds.
In February, a case was lodged in Beijing by a group of 37 people, including lawyers and academics as well as forced labourers and their families, demanding compensation for Chinese citizens made by the Japanese to work as forced labour during World War II.
The Japanese say the war reparations were settled by the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended the war, and bilateral treaties since. They also says all wartime compensation issues concerning China were settled by a 1972 joint statement establishing diplomatic ties.
Not so, said international law professor Pan Guo Ping, of Chongqing's Southwest University. "In international law, the government represents the actions of the state, but that is separate from cases involving the assets of individuals," he said.
The Baosteel Emotion, on a long-term contract between Baoshan Iron & Steel, moves iron ore from Western Australia to steel mill in Shanghai. MOL regularly moves iron ore for Vale SA and BHP Billiton.
WORLD SHIPPING
25 April 2014 - 22:00
MOL pays up as seizure of its ship sparks wartime reparations row
CHINA's Supreme Court announced that Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) has paid JPY2.92 billion (US$28.5 million) in fees and damages as well as CNY2.4 million (US$385,000) in legal costs to free its ship from a Shanghai Maritime Court seizure in a case that dates back to 1937.
WORLD SHIPPING
25 April 2014 - 22:00
MOL pays up as seizure of its ship sparks wartime reparations row
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