PAINFUL MEMORY |The group Malaya Lolas (Free Grandmothers), made up of surviving victims of sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation, recounted their experiences through songs in this 2007 gathering in Candaba, Pampanga province. (Photo by TONETTE T. OREJAS / Inquirer Central Luzon)
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines — The leader of the surviving victims of sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation is appealing to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to immediately seek reparations from Japan on their behalf.
A committee of the United Nations recommended on March 8 that the Philippine government initiate full reparations to the wartime comfort women, as they have also been referred to over the decades.
Two days after that decision by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw), Maria Quilantang Lalu said “Bongbong (the President’s nickname) must act fast in our favor. Many among us are now dead and the few of us remaining do not have long to live.”
“Some of us are already bedridden because we’ve become old, ill or senile,” said the 87-year-old president of Malaya Lolas (Free Grandmothers), the group that filed a complaint in 2019 against the Philippine government which led to the UN ruling on International Women’s Day.
‘Repeated efforts’
According to a statement by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the “complainants [said] they had consistently…requested that the Government of the Philippines espouse their claims and their right to reparations against the Government of Japan.
“Their repeated efforts, however, were dismissed by the authorities, with their last action turned down by the Supreme Court in 2014,” the statement noted.
Cedaw, in its decision, also cited the ordeal that Malaya Lolas went through on Nov. 23, 1944, when the group’s 24 surviving members and other women now deceased were “forcibly taken to the Bahay na Pula (Red House), the Japanese headquarters in San Ildefonso, Pampanga.”
“They were detained in the Red House for one day to three weeks, where they were repeatedly subjected to rape, other forms of sexual violence, torture, and inhumane detention conditions,” the committee said, as quoted by the OHCHR.
The Malaya Lolas recalled that the Japanese rounded up almost all the men and boys in their village of Mapaniqui in Candaba town, then castrated some of them and forced their severed organs into their mouths — in full view of the women who were later herded to the Red House, a mansion turned into a garrison.
There the women, including girls who were not yet in their teens, were repeatedly abused. At times mothers and their daughters were raped in the same room.
‘Study group’
Lalu, who was only nine years old at that time, said more than 90 of them were still alive when they first raised that episode to the public’s attention in 1996.
Almost three decades later, the survivors are down to 24.
“They’re so old. They should get a taste of justice while they are still alive,” said Enrique Catacutan, village chief of Mapaniqui.
He said the villagers were sympathetic to the Malaya Lolas because everyone is a relative.
On Friday, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said the government will reconsider its earlier position that these victims were already paid reparations through its Treaty of Peace with Japan in 1956, which restored ties between the two countries.
But their lawyers said the treaty, in terms of compensation, only covers war veterans, their widows, and orphans.
Remulla said the Department of Justice (DOJ) may consult Congress “about the legislation necessary to act on this matter,…because we haven’t been able to pass legislation for this.”
He also said the DOJ has formed a “study group” led by Undersecretary Raul Vasquez to consider Cedaw’s decision.
“We have to continue the job [of getting the reparation] because that’s part of the international obligation that we have. That’s history and something that is common, most known to us,” the justice chief said.
Malacañang also said it would “study and submit a written response” to Cedaw within six months, in line with that committee’s protocol.
Korean case
Apart from the Philippines, many women in other countries invaded by Japan during World War II were also forced into sexual slavery.
Historians estimate that around 200,000 women in the Asia-Pacific were violated by the Japanese army.
In South Korea, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2011 that the country must seek reparations for its abused women.
Japan, in its 2015 settlement with South Korea, handed over ¥1billion as compensation.
But this angered the victims, and in 2018, President Moon Jae-in reversed the deal with Japan by his predecessor Park Geun-hye.
In the Philippines, lawyers of the Center for International Law asked the Supreme Court in 2013 to consider the Korean case, as they sought reconsideration of its 2010 decision against compelling the government to provide reparations.
But the high court dismissed that motion the next year as it upheld its ruling.