''Song and other former comfort women are a powerful symbol of how women have
been butchered by militarism in the past and which continues today in conflicts
across the globe," said Mina Watanabe, curator of the newly- opened Women's
Active Museum on War and Peace.
The museum is a heroic effort undertaken by women's groups and international
pacifists to leave a record of the cruel comfort women system and other human
rights violations committed in post world war conflicts around the world.
Watanabe explained that the museum has a wide collection of testimonies of
former sex slaves and is a crucial landmark in highlighting the vulnerability
of women in armed conflicts and current sexual trafficking.It provides evidence
to support the urgent need for better laws to punish acts of violence against
women and develop a system where victims can be cared for by governments.
She pointed out that the young Asian women lured to comfort stations were poor
and uneducated and were thus the most vulnerable among women and who still need
protection.
For example, Song continued to suffer after her release at the end of world war
ll after the Japanese defeat.
At the age of 23, Song, who had abandoned two babies in China where she was
stationed, arrived in Japan with a Japanese soldier knowing she could not
return to her conservative home where she would be harshly treated for being a
sex slave.
But she was abandoned in Japan. Penniless, she tried to commit suicide but was
rescued by another Korean man who helped her to eke out a living. Today she
lives on welfare.
''While Japanese soldiers are paid a handsome pension for serving their
country, I have to live on welfare even though I was taken away for the same
purpose. The discrimination against women is too unfair,'' she said.
Yang Chinja, a second-generation Korean in Japan and supporter of Song, says
there is a need to find out and publicly acknowledge who is responsible for
starting the military sexual slave system, the first step to a sincere apology
and to prevent further abuse.
''Only such an apology can be taken as a sincere effort to repent by the state
and will signal Japan`s commitment to protect women's rights in other
conflicts,'' she pointed out.
The urgent need to protect women's rights in conflicts will be brought up at
the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) conference in New York in September and
the issue of an apology from the Japanese government for devising the comfort
women system highlighted as an important step in this direction, Watanabe said.
Japan formally acknowledged setting up of comfort stations only in 1993 and
offered compensation and support allowances to the old and sick women a few
years later.
But new history text books have dropped reference to the comfort women system
and conservative researchers have reported that Korean and other Asian sex
slaves were in fact prostitutes or knowingly went to work with local male
traffickers.
And this has angered not only Koreans but other Asian countries colonised by
imperial Japan -- particularly China which has used past atrocities as a stick
to beat Japan with and thwart that country's plans to claim a seat in the
United Nations Security Council.
For their part, rights activists are not prepared to let the issue slide and
are planning new campaigns. Several demonstrations will be staged on Aug. 15 in
front of Japanese embassies to keep the world's attention focused on the issue.
Inter Press Service
