Spotlight: "Comfort women" still pain for world, shame on Japan

In front of the Japanese embassy in South Korea sits a bronze statue of a girl. She sits on a chair bare-footed, with two clenched fists on her lap. The girl symbolizes the hundreds of thousands of "comfort women" for Japanese soldiers during the World War II.

The issue of comfort women is a dark chapter in East Asian history that hasn't yet come to an end. The pain remains for the hundreds of thousands of women from occupied countries and elsewhere, including the Netherlands, forced to join the Japanese army and serve as sex slaves during war times.

The Japanese government has adopted a renunciatory and unconcerned attitude to its responsibility. It keeps claiming the comfort women "served" Japanese soldiers voluntarily, denying they were forced to do so.

This year, civil groups from China, South Korea, Japan, China's Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor and the Netherlands have pushed for efforts to include documents related to comfort women in the list of UNESCO Memory of the World. The move has been met with resistance from certain groups in Japan.

BEASTLY ACT, FOREVER PAIN FOR VICTIMS

"He (Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) is waiting for all of us to die, but I'm not going to die, I'll keep living," 93-year-old Jan Ruff-O'Hern told media this February.

Younge is a Dutch woman born in Indonesia. In 1944, she was taken by the Japanese army and locked in a "comfort station." That's when her nightmare began.

Day and night, Younge was raped, beaten and was subjected to forced abortions until the war was over.

The horrible experience in the den of monsters has haunted comfort women all their lives. The acute pain in their voices can still be heard.

"There were only grandma Hou and us two female lawyers, but she can only tell her story by whispering into my ear, fearing others can hear," said Kang Jian, a Chinese lawyer who has represented comfort women in lawsuits, describing a scene of late Chinese victim Hou Qiaolian. "Even so, it's difficult. Recalling the painful memory made her fall of the chair."

The story of another Chinese victim who was forced to become a comfort woman, Liu Mianhuan, is just as tragic. "When we returned to the former site of the 'comfort station', grandma Liu was so nervous that she kept looking for the toilet. Back then, she was locked in the cave-house naked, only when she crawled to the toilet could she find a little relaxation," said Kang.

"We lawyers are highly sensitive, enduring people, but every time after I investigated and took evidence from a "comfort woman" survivor, I could't eat and kept crying."

On July 1st, Ren Lane, who was forced to become a comfort woman when she was just 13, died in Shanxi Province in northwest China. Her last words: "Japan must apologize for what it has done."

These women's stories are just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women, the Japanese army built a large numbers of comfort houses from 1937 until Japan's surrender in 1945. At least 400,000 Asian women were forced to become sex slaves to Japanese soldiers.

Center director Su Zhiliang says the sex slavery system was one maneuvered by state power, implemented by military force, and mainly consisted of foreign women. This kind of national crime was unprecedented in human history.

DENIAL -- FURTHER CRIME FOR JAPAN

The surviving comfort women have never received a sincere apology from the Japanese government, which has been tactful in avoiding responsibility.

In documents submitted to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) in February, Japan said it is hard to draw a line between forcefully recruited sex slaves and those willing to be recruited.

It squarely refuses to compensate victims or take any legal action to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Tokyo signed an accord with South Korea at the end of last year admitting responsibility and setting up a fund to compensate the remaining victims. Nevertheless, this was no example of national atonement.

Part of the pact made between the two countries includes a clause whereby South Korea will never revive the issue of "comfort women" again. Japan is also pushing for the statue erected in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in honor of the women to be removed.

The subject of comfort women has also been deliberately removed from Japanese text books. The term "comfort women" appeared in history text books by seven publishing houses in 1997, while there was no mention of the issue or related content by 2012.

There is practically zero media coverage of events at the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo, an establishment devoted to sexual violence by the Japanese military during the war.

Its director Eriko Ikeda said Abe is trying to make Japan a "beautiful country," which tolerates no such topics as comfort women. "The media know just too well the topic will be sensitive," she said.

A recent report by David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights, shows that the Japanese media are increasingly concerned about the government's suppression of public opinion and muzzling of the press.

A landmark suppression of media by Abe's government was a furore caused by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 2014.

Under pressure from the government, the newspaper was forced to admit its reports on comfort women were "inaccurate." As a result, the credibility of the highly-regarded paper was somewhat dented and sales dropped.

FIGHTING CONTINUED

In spite of all the denials by the Japanese government on the comfort women issue, groups in and outside Japan have never given up their fight for the truth.

Chinese lawyer Kang has frequently visited remote rural areas in China to often record the last words of witnesses. She also testified on behalf of victims in Japanese courts.

The scholar Su devoted more than a decade to research on the topic. Thanks to his work, conditions of the Chinese "comfort women" were amplified.

The South Korean organization, the Comfort Women Issue Consultation, has never stopped their weekly "Wednesday meeting" since January 1992 in efforts to press for compensation and an apology.

Before cancer took her life, Matsui Yayori gave out everything she owned to set up the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo showcasing stories of the Japanese war time sex slaves.

They devoted their energies to the just cause of revealing to the world the real face of the Japanese atrocities during the WWII. The bid to put relevant "comfort women" documents in the list of UNESCO Memory of the World, have moved their cause forward.

A total of 2,744 documents were submitted for the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. Every single witness record is a testimony to the cruelty of the "comfort women" system.

The truth will never be buried forever, and the calls of the victims have reached more and more people across the world.

In 1996, a report by the UN Commission on Human Rights said the Japanese government forced women in the invaded countries into sex slaves for its army and Tokyo should apologize.

In 2007, parliaments of the United States, the Netherlands and Canada, as well as the European Parliament endorsed moves to condemn the "comfort women" system, and urged Japan to apologize and claim responsibility. The United States also called off the use of comfort women in all its government documents and recommended the term "forced sex slaves."

In August 2014, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called on Japan to take "immediate and effective legislative and administrative measures" to ensure that all allegations of sexual slavery are investigated and perpetrators prosecuted.

The image of the girl statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul has gone global, reminding people of the history Tokyo has been trying so hard to cover up.

For Japan, the courage to face up to the history is the first step to restoring trust with its close neighbors. The world awaits Japan to do just that. Endi