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At Harvard, protesters demand Abe to apologize for Japan's wartime crimes

Xinhua, April 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

Dozens of protesters on Monday shouted "Abe must apologize!" as visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a speech here at the Harvard University.

The protesters, mainly students from the prestigious university and Korean Americans, held signs and posters urging Abe to look squarely at history and apologize for the crimes committed by Japan during the World War II.

One sign read: "History can be rewritten. The Truth cannot." Another asked Abe to "stop denying" and called for "unequivocal apology now."

Abe arrived in Boston on Sunday, kicking off his week-long visit to the United States that includes a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama and a speech to a joint session of Congress. His attitude toward history has strained Japan's ties with neighboring countries including China and South Korea.

In response to a question about "comfort women", a euphemism for the females forced into sex slavery to the Japanese military during the war, Abe told Harvard students that his "heart aches" when he thinks about the women who were victimized by human trafficking and who were subject to "immeasurable pain and suffering."

The Prime Minister added that he "had the occasion to mention" that he would uphold a 1993 statement of apology on the issue, and his feeling is no different from his predecessors in this regard.

Erik Gorard, a computer science student at Harvard, said he was "pretty disappointed" at Abe's answer, adding that the Japanese Prime Minister "definitely evaded that question a little bit." "Concerning today's speech, I don't think he will address the comfort women issue in any more detail" in his speech to Congress, Gorard said. Endite