2024/03/21

In the end, he discerned the character and conduct of the Japanese people and came to trust them.
The following is another article I found on the Internet the other day.
Belgian Baron Albert d’Anethan
2014-04-11
I published yesterday’s newspaper article, but since I had not read the final section carefully, I am publishing it again.
Can Belgium Once Again See Through “China’s Brutality”?
April 10, 2014 — MSN Sankei News
I wondered whether the word “panda” might derive from “propaganda,” meaning the manipulation of international public opinion.
The “panda diplomacy” that President Xi Jinping, aged 60, displayed in Belgium in late March during his European tour was disturbing enough to invite such a misunderstanding.
The classification that calls the “good” kind, which uses factual information, “white propaganda,” and the “bad” kind, which conceals false information, “black propaganda” also brings to mind the panda’s distinctive black-and-white markings.
Japan has experienced this too: adorable pandas make China feel familiar and create a peaceful impression.
Belgium, however, is the country that produced Baron Albert d’Anethan, its diplomatic envoy to Japan, who was not misled by black propaganda.
I would like Belgium once again to see through the brutality of China, which hides behind pandas, massacres ethnic minorities, and deprives its own people of freedom.
I would like to see the pride of contemporary Europe, with its sensitivity to human rights abuses.
Baron Albert d’Anethan spent many years in Japan, from 1893 to 1910.
In the end, he discerned the character and conduct of the Japanese people and came to trust them.
Even during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, his discerning eye was not deceived by the black propaganda that threatened to isolate the Empire of Japan internationally.
This crisis was caused primarily by the spread of fabricated reports in American newspapers.
When the naval port of Port Arthur was captured, it was reported that “the Japanese army massacred 60,000 Qing noncombatants, women, and young children, and only 36 escaped.”
The baron, who was familiar with the discipline of the Japanese army, must have had clear doubts about the figure of 60,000, considering Port Arthur’s area and population.
He began an investigation and sent reports to his home country.
“Japan provides attentive care for the sick and wounded, and the Red Cross is fully active with the support of the Empress. Japan complies with the Geneva Convention, which it joined in 1886 to protect the victims of land warfare.”
“I heard directly from Viscount Labris, a French military officer who was present at the scene. Those killed were soldiers who had taken off their uniforms, and the claim that women were killed is untrue. The residents had evacuated before the occupation, leaving only soldiers and workers at the weapons and ammunition factories. Even while seeing the bodies of their comrades who had been treated cruelly, the Japanese soldiers somehow managed to capture the enemy.”
Qing officers and soldiers killed Japanese officers and soldiers, dismembered their bodies, and hung them from trees and eaves.
Japanese officers and soldiers continued fighting while fiercely angered by such acts of desecration by the Qing side.
Meanwhile, Qing officers and soldiers who had begun to retreat took off their uniforms, forced their way into private homes, and changed into civilian clothing.
They were soldiers in civilian clothes.
While looking for opportunities to escape, these soldiers in civilian clothes fired sniper shots at Japanese officers and soldiers from inside private homes.
Dr. Nagao Ariga (1860–1921), a scholar of international law who served as a legal adviser, stated that “the Qing do not observe the rules of warfare at all” and judged that firing on soldiers in civilian clothes was lawful.
This judgment was made in light of the rules of land warfare at the time of the First Sino-Japanese War.
Some foreign newspapers portrayed the response to soldiers in civilian clothes who were posing as noncombatants as a “massacre.”
This article continues.