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Post by Admin on Jul 3, 2015 2:17:37 GMT
A group of South Korean women who were forced into sex slavery by Japan during World War II in order to serve its soldiers announced on Tuesday that they will sue the Japanese government for $20 million in a California district court on July 1 unless it makes suitable amends before then. The 10 women will seek $2 million each in compensation for what they have called systemic war crimes committed against them by soldiers and Japanese companies under the direction of the Japanese government, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap. The matter has long created a wedge in South Korean-Japanese relations, and has resurfaced again as the two countries mark the 50-year-anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II this year. Since all legal avenues for reparations have previously failed in South Korea and Japan, the women plan to pursue their case in a US court, targeting companies including Mitsubishi and others involved in the alleged war crimes, AFP reported. Businessmen also reportedly used military brothels — euphemistically known as "comfort women stations" — during the time they were active, and semi-governmental or independent companies were allegedly involved in operating the operations in occupied territories. If the government fails to do so, the group will lodge the suit under international law in California on July 1, the women's attorney Kim Hyung-Jin said. Comfort women brought a similar class-action lawsuit before a Washington, DC-based federal court in 2000, but the court said the case was outside its jurisdiction and sided with Japan. "Money is absolutely not the point," Kim insisted. "The point is that Japan admits to its war crimes and offers a sincere apology." Japanese authorities contend the issue was settled after the government delivered a package of aid and loans worth $800 million to South Korea under a normalization agreement in 1965, under which Japan says South Korea renounced rights to reparation and property claims. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono also issued a statement in 1993, known as the Kono Statement, in which, after years of denials, he acknowledged that the government had coerced women to work in brothels. "The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations," he said, noting that "the recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military." South Korea maintains that Japan has not done enough to atone for the atrocities. Last Friday, state representatives did not show up at the first conciliation hearing between Japan and the comfort women in Seoul, Yonhap reported. During his first term in government, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suffered some international backlash after he said he didn't believe the women were forced into sexual slavery by the military.
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Post by Admin on Jul 11, 2015 2:42:58 GMT
After decades of fruitless campaigning at home and abroad, a group of South Korean women forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army are seeking restitution in a Californian court. Twelve former “comfort women” were due to file a $24 million civil suit against Japan and a number of Japanese firms on July 1, unless Japan agreed to compensation and an apology, according to Yonhap News Agency. But, as non-U.S. citizens suing foreign entities, how likely is it that they’ll find satisfactory redress in a U.S. court? Not very, according to two U.S. experts in international law that spoke to The Diplomat. While each was keen to stress that they didn’t have details of the case beyond news reports, they both indicated a low chance of success due to jurisdictional issues. A likely legal basis for the case is the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 act that empowers U.S. courts to hear cases where a foreigner has been victimized through a violation of international law. While antiquated, the act has been used successfully in modern times in cases involving war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity. “There were cases being made, and there were judgments for acts that were occurring on foreign soil, but there’s usually some kind of nexus to the United States,” John R. Cencich, a former U.N. war crimes investigator at the Hague, told The Diplomat. Crucially, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the ATS does not apply to jurisdictions outside the U.S. The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., involved a number of Nigerian citizens suing several foreign oil exploration companies for alleged human rights abuses. “What they said was that there is a presumption against the extraterritorial applicability of a United States statue, that our laws are presumed to have no extraterritorial effect — unless of course the statute itself says that it does,” said the California University of Pennsylvania law professor. But Cencich noted that the court left open the possibility of the act applying in cases with some connection to the U.S., even if the offense did not actually occur on American soil. “They do kind of dance around it and allude, possibly, that there’s another type of nexus to the United States,” he said, noting ongoing cases involving U.S. military contractors accused of detainee abuse in Iraq. In the case of the comfort women, the lack of a clear U.S. connection makes legal victory doubtful, Cencich said. “Based on what I’ve read, I don’t see it happening,” he said. “I don’t see them prevailing.” A California-based lawyer who specializes in human rights cases was similarly doubtful. The attorney, who wished to remain anonymous, said that if the plaintiffs want to sue the state of Japan, rather than individuals involved in their abuse, they would have to use the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a remedy only available to U.S. citizens. Furthermore, to successfully hold Japan liable, they would have to prove that their abuse involved “commercial activities,” similar to when a state is held liable for a crash by the national airline in another jurisdiction. She said that a previous case taken by her organization on behalf of comfort women more than a decade ago had failed on this basis.
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Post by Admin on Jul 19, 2015 1:59:15 GMT
Former sex slaves of the Japanese imperial army hope journalists will share truth of their ordeal with the Japanese public. Just before the 70th anniversary of South Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, 17 editorial writers and board members from national and local newspapers in Japan met former comfort women for the Japanese imperial army to hear for themselves how these victims had been recruited for service. This is the first time that a group of Japanese journalists have met the comfort women. Yasuhiro Mori, vice chair of the editorial board for Kyodo News, brought the delegation to the House of Sharing on July 16. Located in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, the House of Sharing is the home of the surviving comfort women. Upon arriving, Mori spoke briefly with reporters. “Japan and South Korea have a different perspective on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and Japan’s colonial rule. We are visiting to seek a way for Japan and South Korea to achieve historical reconciliation.” The press delegation was composed of a total of 17 editorial writers and board members from 16 Japanese newspapers including Kyodo News, the Hokkaido Shimbun, and the Kobe Shimbun. The journalists reportedly arranged the meeting so that they could hear the comfort women talk about their experiences of compulsory recruitment as comfort women, a historical point on which South Korea and Japan are sharply at odds. Uncomfortable with the attention of the South Korean press, the delegation at one point even considered canceling the visit. The delegation only permitted photography on a limited basis. After watching a half-hour biographical video about the comfort women, the journalists held a closed-door meeting with four of the survivors, including Lee Ok-seon, 89. During the conversation, the journalists asked the women questions about the horrors of their recruitment. After describing the compulsory nature of their recruitment to the journalists, the women reportedly asked them to share the truth with the Japanese public to enable the Japanese government to make a sincere apology.
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Post by Admin on Aug 3, 2015 2:00:21 GMT
The Liberal Democratic Party has submitted to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a written proposal to restore Japan's honour and trust by eradicating misperceptions overseas about the so-called comfort women issue. The ruling party's proposal calls on the government to make forthright counterarguments to groundless criticism of Japan on this issue, and to provide accurate information to relevant parties through various channels. Abe said he will take this proposal "seriously". The content of the proposal must be swiftly and appropriately reflected in government policies. A reference to comfort women in a textbook for US high schools says the Japanese military "forcibly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as many as 200,000 women aged 14 to 20". The Japanese government lodged a protest with the publisher, but the exaggerated number and inaccurate description contained in this passage remain uncorrected. The distorted expression "sexual slavery" has been frequently used when referring to the comfort women, including in the US House of Representatives resolution that criticised Japan over the issue. Unless something is done, this erroneous perception will spread and it could tacitly emerge as an accomplished fact. A key factor behind the LDP proposal was the Asahi Shimbun's admission in August 2014 that remarks by Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have forcibly taken away South Korean women to make them serve as comfort women - comments that the Asahi reported - were untrue. The proposal says the Asahi's responsibility is irreversibly heavy because the daily newspaper continued fabrications in its articles for 32 years without thoroughly verifying Yoshida's comments. The proposal also touched on the Kono statement, a statement issued in 1993 under the name of then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono. At a press conference after the statement was issued, Kono said it was "true" that women had been forcibly taken away. The proposal points out that it is "a major problem". The statement itself was crafted from an understanding that it could not be confirmed that women had been forcibly taken away. However, the proposal says that Kono's remarks helped spread around the world the mistaken perception that women were apparently forcibly taken away. Kono later served as LDP president and speaker of the House of Representatives. The LDP's view on Kono has been extraordinary. The proposal clearly states that "there is no room for argument that women were recruited by civilian agents to work and those women's human rights and their dignity was impaired seriously". Counter-arguments based on this premise will certainly have more persuasive power. The government's position is that all wartime compensation issues have been legally resolved. Even so, it established the Asian Women's Fund and paid atonement money and gave a letter of apology from the prime minister to 285 former comfort women, including those from South Korea.
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2015 1:57:00 GMT
A 80-year old South Korean set himself on fire on Wednesday during a protest calling for Japan to apologise for forcing Korean girls and women to work in military brothels during World War Two, days ahead of the anniversary of the end of hostilities. The self-immolation occurred during a regular weekly demonstration outside the Japanese embassy ahead of the August 15 anniversary marking 70 years since the end of Japan's colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula. With the anniversary looming, Wednesday's protest was larger than usual, with about 2000 demonstrators, including three of the 47 known surviving Korean "comfort women", as they were euphemistically called by Japan, organisers said. Bystanders covered the man with protest banners to put out the flames and paramedics took him to hospital. The man, identified as Choi Hyun-yeol by a civic group with which he was affiliated, was in critical condition with burns to his neck, face, and upper torso, a hospital professor said. "The patient is old and has severe burns so his survival can't be guaranteed," the professor told reporters. Choi's father was a member of an anti-Japanese independence movement in 1932 and jailed for a year, according to a statement posted online by the civic group, which advocates for the rights of forced labour victims. Choi became a supporter of the group last year. In South Korea, Japan's 1910-1945 colonisation of the Korean peninsula remains a sensitive subject. South Korea's ties with Japan have long been strained by what Seoul sees as Japanese leaders' reluctance to atone for the country's wartime past, including a full recognition of its role in forcing Korean girls and women to work in brothels.
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