Hong Kong activists hold anti-Japan protest on surrender day

HONG KONG (AFP) - Activists marched to the Japanese consulate here Wednesday to demand that Japan return a disputed set of islands, after bad weather forced them to scrap a trip there.

Around 20 protesters from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China had planned to sail Sunday to the disputed Diaoyu Islands on Sunday and make landfall on Wednesday, the anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender.

The trip was to demonstrate against what they see as Japanese occupation of the islands, but was postponed because of the weather to a later date.
Instead they marched to the consulate, where they shouted slogans and waved a banner that read: "Get out of Diaoyu islands."

"Japan has never taken any actions to apologise to the Chinese war victims nor compensate them. We want to show we are not happy about this," said David Ko, chairman of Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands.

"We want a more concrete plan to resolve this issue," he added.
The activists have made regular trips to claim the islands, known as the Senkaku islands by Japan which has nominal control of the archipelago.

Japan claimed the islands in 1895 but they were temporarily put under US control after World War II and returned to Japan in 1972 together with Okinawa. They are also claimed by China and Taiwan.

A Hong Kong activist, David Chan, drowned in September 1996 after he jumped overboard when his protest ship, blocked by a Japanese coast guard flotilla, was unable to reach the islands.