Yok Mu-ming, chairman of the New Party of Taiwan, bangs a log against the "Peace Bell" at a memorial hall commemorating the Nanjing Massacre victims in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province yesterday.- Xinhua

Yok Mu-ming, chairman of the New Party of Taiwan, offered condolences yesterday morning to victims of the Nanjing Massacre, an atrocity committed by the invading Japanese troops in December 1937 during World War II.
At the Memorial Hall of Compatriots Murdered in the Nanjing Massacre, Yok called on all Chinese compatriots to draw lessons from history, be united and make concerted efforts to promote peace, prosperity and reunification of the motherland.
"Discord among the people and secession of the nation will only result in contempt, bullying and killing by others," he said.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, Yok said, urging the Japanese militarist and rightist forces to repent for their wartime crimes and take history as a mirror.
He rang a giant peace bell erected on the square of the Memorial Hall to pray for peace and wrote an inscription saying, "Never forget national humiliation."
More than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were slain during the infamous Nanjing Massacre, which occurred after the forceful occupation of Nanjing on December 13, 1937, by the intruding Japanese troops. About 20,000 women were raped and killed, and one-third of the houses in the city burned down in the six-week atrocity, which was taken as one of the three bloodiest massacres of World War II.
The Nanjing municipal government built a memorial hall at the Jiangdong Gate in 1985 in memory of the victims.
The hall had received at least 11 million visitors from home and abroad by the end of June, including more than 500,000 people from Japan.
Earlier, Yok and his entourage paid tributes at the Mausoleum of Dr Sun Yat-sen, forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution that ended feudal rule in the 1911 Revolution.
Yok laid a floral wreath before the sedentary statue of Dr Sun. The New Party delegation also followed the traditional Chinese way of paying respect to the deceased by making three bows toward the seated statue of Dr Sun, and then visited the chamber where his coffin is placed.
The mausoleum, one of the featured sites of unique historical interest in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, is on the southern slope of the Purple Hills.
Before his departure from the mausoleum, Yok wrote an inscription and gave a brief speech calling for more efforts for the reunification of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
The New Party delegation left Nanjing for Dalian in the afternoon.
Before boarding the plane, Yok and his entourage were met and given a banquet by Luo Zhijun, secretary of the Nanjing municipal committee of the Communist Party of China.
Yok and his team arrived in Nanjing from Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on Thursday afternoon, where they were received by Li Yuanchao, secretary of CPC's Jiangsu Provincial Committee.
Their eight-day mainland tour, called "a journey of the Chinese nation," began on July 6 and coincides with the 60th anniversary of China's victory in the war against Japanese aggression.
After Dalian, the third-leg of the tour, the delegation will head to Beijing.