Groups urge DFA to initiate talks with Japan on comfort women

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) should “maintain a sense of dignity for the Philippines by not kowtowing to the whimsical grumblings of the Japanese government” against the installation of a “comfort woman” statue on Roxas Boulevard, an alliance of women rallied on Saturday.

In a joint statement of the Gabriela National Alliance of Women and the Lila Pilipina, an organization of wartime sex slaves, the women members urged the DFA to “assert sovereignty and historical integrity” by initiating talks for Japan to officially recognize Filipinos’ history and demands for justice that the former war aggressor “has ignored and dismissed as a past better forgotten.”

“Honoring our past and drawing lessons from it are a patriotic right and duty, they are sovereign acts of our nation who want to fight imperialist aggression and work to prevent its repeat,” Gabriela Vice Chair Gert Libang said.

“Japanese officials for their part should not use their felt displeasure as a leverage to threaten retaliatory moves if their wishes for the statue are not heeded,” she added.

The groups also called on the Manila City government and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) to stand a “principled ground” to keep the statue and host many more actions to raise public awareness about comfort women.

The said statue, officially unveiled last Dec. 8 in memory of Filipino women forced into sexual servitude by invading Japanese troops during World War II, was commissioned by the Tulay Foundation, a Manila-based group composed of members of the Chinese-Filipino community.

But the DFA has called out why the statue was built, noting that the issue of comfort women is a “sensitive issue” “both domestically and bilaterally with Japan.”

READ: Manila ‘comfort woman’ statue raises thorny issue with Japan

GABRIELA and Lila Pilipina said they want the statue to remain as a reminder that Japan “has still not made genuine moves to address the historic injustice done by its military in forcing millions of Asian women serve as sex slaves for invading soldiers.”

“Japan should honestly do what the comfort women have been demanding for decades, that is official recognition, official apology, and official direct reparations,” Libang said.

Libang also noted that in 1993, Tokyo issued an apology which acknowledged their military’s involvement in the coercive brothel system but refused to admit their government’s direct hand in it. /jpv

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