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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2014 21:46:48 GMT
According to a statement by government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Thursday, the Japanese government asked the United Nations to partially retract an old United Nations report detailing abuses against Korean and other women who were forced to work as “comfort women” during the Second World War. The government’s request was rejected by the report’s author. The revelation comes amid a broader trend in Japan where conservative politicians have challenged the veracity of international claims regarding how the Imperial Japanese Army treated women in Korea and elsewhere during the war. Suga did not specify what sections of the report were in question. The report, authored by former U.N. special rapporteur Radhika Coomaraswamy in 1996, called on Japan to apologize to the victims and pay reparations to survivors who had been forced into sex slavery during the war. The report was authored after Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued a statement in 1993 sharing the conclusions of a Japanese government study that declared that the Imperial Japanese Army was culpable of forcing women — mostly Koreans and Chinese — into sexual slavery. Kono’s statement included an apology and has been under criticism by some Japanese conservatives. For example, current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during his first term in 2007, stated that he did not believe that the women were necessarily forced into sexual slavery, sparking controversy at the time. Though Abe has recently been less willing to explicitly contradict the Kono statement, remarks from within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party suggest that the Kono statement could be amended in the future. That his administration would now try to revise the U.N. special rapporteurs’ report is evidence that Abe’s government is likely pandering to a small but considerably influential conservative political base in Japan. South Korea condemned the Japanese government’s attempt to revise the report. Noh Kwang-il, spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, remarked, “However hard the Japanese government tries to distort the true nature of the comfort women issue and play down or hide the past wrongdoings, it will never be able to whitewash history.” The domestic debate on the issue in Japan was transformed this summer when the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, a left-leaning publication, issued a retraction of several articles it had published on the issue of sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army that were based on a discredited source. Japanese conservatives took this to vindicate their apprehension about the international consensus on the issue. Despite the Asahi Shimbun‘s retraction, the testimonies of numerous survivors of sexual slavery under the Imperial Japanese Army — particularly South Korean survivors — continue to resonate in the region. Historical issues are a particular inhibitor to closer ties between Northeast Asian states. In particular, relations between South Korea and Japan have been chilly ever since Shinzo Abe returned to power in December 2012. South Korea continues to demand that Japan resolve the “comfort women” issue ”effectively and in a way that is agreeable to the living victims.” Issues like historical revisionism on the comfort women issue are non-negotiable for the South Korean government. Beyond the government, public opinion of Japan, particularly the government under Abe, is at historic lows in South Korea.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2014 14:49:45 GMT
Media in China slam Japan over its latest denial that it was using "comfort women" during World War II forcing them to work in military brothels. According to reports, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has rejected his predecessor Yohei Kono's statement made in 1993, admitting that the Japanese military had coerced women into being sex slaves. A commentary in the People's Liberation Army Daily observes that this is the first time the Japanese government has openly rejected Mr Kono's admission. Criticising right-wing forces in Japan, the article says the "denial" and "distortion" of history have strongly damaged the reputation of the country. Lashing out at Japan, a front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily says that "denial of history will never earn respect". "The administration of PM Shinzo Abe is scheming to escape responsibilities and cover up their wrongdoing, but no matter what means they resort to, they are not able to deceive anyone," writes the paper. "Japan has said it wants to be a peaceful nation and calls for meetings with the top leaders of neighbouring countries to develop friendly ties, but it keeps denying its sins of militarism, causing its neighbours and the international community to be worried," says the article. A report in the Guangming Daily accuses Japan of duplicity. "The Abe regime is trying to be friendly with Beijing, Seoul and Pyongyang and is temporarily hiding its arrogance in order to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough," says the daily, "However, Mr Suga's comments remind us once again that the conservative right-wing forces in Japan have never stopped distorting history by using even more despicable and sinister means." And finally, media highlight a discussion about the need to apply the "rule of law" in the armed forces after a powerful military body warned of "ideological struggles" in the army. On Wednesday, the Central Military Commission published a front-page article in the People's Liberation Army Daily, urging the military to remain loyal to the Communist Party's leadership and strengthen the "rule of law". The article notes that ideological struggles and differing views within the People's Liberation Army (PLA) are "exceptionally acute and complicated", and that military reform could be hindered by "structural problems". "There have been some public intellectuals advocating the nationalisation of the army through disaffiliating it from the Party's leadership," PLA Major General Luo Yuan tells English-language daily Global Times.
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Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2014 13:56:43 GMT
Sung K. Min (l) president of The Korean American Association of Greater New York and Arthur Flug (r) executive director of the Center discuss plans to construct a permanent exhibition at The Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, Queensborough Community College to tell the story of Asian comfort women, who were forced into sexual servitude during World War II by the Japanese Army. The largely unknown but tragic history of Asian comfort women will soon be part of the Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Archives, officials announced Thursday. The permanent exhibit at the Queensborough Community College site would give a voice to a generation of women who were ignored and shamed. Leaders from the Asian-American community and the center said they want to make sure the stories of young Asian women forced to be sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army are not forgotten. “For more than 75 years, the comfort women of Korea have lived in the shadows of history,” said Arthur Flug, executive director of the Kupferberg Holocaust Center. Some Holocaust survivors and former comfort women have formed a bond in their joint effort to make sure their respective World War II horrors are not forgotten after they pass away. “We have to remember, we have to educate the next generation,” said Sung K. Min, president of the Korean American Association of Greater New York. The controversial comfort women issue has driven a wedge between the Korean and Japanese communities. Historians say up to 200,000 girls and young women served as comfort women for soldiers during the war. But some Japanese lawmakers and citizens maintain the women were willing participants. The women who lived through the ordeal often came home to families that rejected them. City Councilman Peter Koo has championed efforts to honor Asian comfort women with a street renaming or memorial. He supports the plan to place a permanent exhibition about the comfort women at the Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives. Flug and Min said their groups will work together to raise funds for the exhibit, which could cost $50,000 to $80,000 to install and maintain. It would include images and interactive elements, such as videotaped interviews with survivors and the college students who conducted them. City Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing), Flug and community leaders are hoping to name a street or monument to honor the comfort women but have been unable to find a location. “Monuments are important, they focus people’s attention” said Flug. “This exhibit becomes part of the curriculum and college experience.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2014 14:19:29 GMT
Comfort women is a euphemism for the females serving as prostitutes to the Japanese military during World War II. The conservative press, led by the ultranationalist Sankei Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun, seized upon the Asahi’s partial retraction of past reporting as absolute proof that the government had no role in coercing women into working as prostitutes. After the Asahi retraction, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party issued a statement demanding that newspapers worldwide correct their mistaken reports — which, they seemed to imply, was based solely on Yoshida’s testimony. The LDP has also pledged to conduct an investigation into the comfort women issue. Perhaps they should simply ask former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. He seems to know a lot about the comfort women. In his memoir, “The Neverending Navy,” he described his wartime experiences managing troops: “After a while, some of the soldiers began to attack the women and gamble. So I took great efforts to build a comfort station.” When questioned about this account at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in March 2007, he refused to give a final answer but agreed with the Kono statement (regarding the treatment of the comfort women) and said, “As a Japanese person, I think it’s something Japan should apologize for…and apologize again.” According to military documents, Nakasone ordered his troops in Southeast Asia to “gather the local women (土人女) and make a comfort station.” It’s unlikely to be a place where people played shogi (Japanese chess). Tsuneo Watanabe of the Yomiuri is a good friend of Nakasone, so maybe he should ask his old buddy for clarification? The Sankei has made a huge stink over the comfort women issue. The greatest denier of their reporting is Sankei’s former president, Nobutaka Shikanai, who served in the accounting division of the Imperial Japanese Army during the war. He was in charge of staffing and opening “comfort stations.” He describes his work in “The Secret History After the War” as follows: “When we procured the girls, we had to look at their endurance, how used up they were, whether they were good or not. We had to calculate the alloted time for commissioned officers, commanding officers, grunts, how many minutes. We also had to fix prices according to rank. There was even a prospectus we learned in (military) accounting school.” The term Shikanai used for the procurement of women was choben, an old military word that referred to gathering food for the horses. There are hundreds of documents showing the Japanese military’s involvement in the comfort stations, as well as recent testimony. There are records from Japan’s postwar Ministry of Justice in which soldiers admitted to having been paid money to keep the crimes quiet as the war ended. There is one uncomfortable truth about the comfort women. Prostitution was legal in Japan before the war and after. Yes, some of the women were well paid and treated reasonably well. Many comfort women were also Japanese women. Few of them have come forward. For argument’s sake, let’s put aside the issue of kyoseirenko — forced transportation. Even if that didn’t exist, it doesn’t render the suffering of those swindled into the work — physically abused and held under conditions that modern-day Japan recognizes as human trafficking — any less horrific.
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Post by Admin on Nov 6, 2014 14:49:53 GMT
During his first stint, PM Shinzo Abe, denied that Japan’s military had any role in coercively recruiting these women. There was speculation he may revise the Kono Statement. A major discord surfaced when in 2013 PM Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine that commemorates war dead – a gesture detested by South Korea as a past victim of Japanese militarism. Fearing a possible fall out, during the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague this year, the US organized a meeting between South Korea and Japan - America’s two strongest allies in Asia. The summit concluded with Abe announcing the Kono Statement to continue as is. However, Abe’s cabinet went ahead and announced a review of the drafting process of the Kono Statement, and on June 20 released a report stating that the content in the statement was drafted jointly by both nations, perhaps hinting at a probable ‘Korean influence’ on the statement. As Tessa Morris – Suzuki, Professor of Japanese History at Australia National University says, “Abe's goal for a long time has been to ‘re-educate’ the Japanese and international public into believing a sanitized version of the ‘comfort women’ history. According to this history, there was no forced recruitment of women by the Japanese military, and Japan's behavior was no different from that of other countries in wartime. The current Japanese government has a generally ‘denialist’ approach. Although Abe has not yet officially abandoned the Kono statement, his government has been working very hard to undermine its credibility.” This nationalistic approach has been further reaffirmed with Asahi Shimbun, one of the five national newspapers in Japan, retracting its articles carried during the eighties and nineties which recognized that “comfort women” were indeed forced into sexual slavery based on the narratives of a person named Yoshida Seiji, who claimed he had coerced women on the island of Jeju into service. The newspaper said that many of Seiji’s accounts were faulty. Interestingly the retraction came following the criticism from the conservative intelligentsia, and also the Abe government, who allege that the accounts of comfort women are demeaning Japan’s image globally. After the Asahi withdrawal, Japan demanded a revision of the 1996 UN report, which described the comfort women system as “military sexual slavery.” It was compiled by Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former special rapporteur on violence against women at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Coomaraswamy is said to have declined to revise the report stating that the Seiji reference was only one part of the evidence. Some are of the view that Japan should not be singled out when there has been evidence of state backed brothels across the globe. In fact there are reports of American troops, after the Japanese surrender, frequenting the comfort stations. They reject phrases like “sex slaves” and “sexual slavery” given to the comfort women system, with some calling them “professional prostitutes.” Suzuki adds though Japan was certainly not the only country to run military brothels, its wartime "comfort station" system was exceptionally large in scale, and there is abundant evidence that some (though not all) of the "comfort women" were forcibly recruited by the Japanese military and their agents. Dismissing the matter by merely calling them “professional prostitutes,” experts feel , is actually dishonoring a set of people who felt violated with the treatment history has meted out to them. As Prof. Jeff Kingston of Temple University, Japan Campus, says, “They (comfort women) would like their dignity restored by a direct official apology not the arms length AWF (Asian Women’s Fund:1995-2007) that was an equivocal gesture established by Japan to make amends but avoid any legal responsibility.” The South Korean government, on the other hand, has from time to time used historical conflicts with Japan to stir nationalistic sentiment, Suzuki said. This is evident from the recent memorial hall constructed by China, at the request of South Korean President Park Geun-hye during her Beijing visit in 2013, to commemorate the Korean nationalist Ahn Jung-geun who had assassinated by the Japanese Governor General of Korea Hirobumi Ito on Oct. 26, 1909. The memorial is situated in the Chinese city of Harbin where the assassination took place. While Tokyo expressing “regret” over the memorial called Mr. Ahn a “terrorist,” South Korea responded by calling Japan a “terrorist state.” Suzuki adds, “It is also influenced by a decision of the Korean Supreme Court which ruled in 2011 that the South Korean government's failure to negotiate a just solution to the problem with Japan infringes the basic human rights of the victims (comfort women) and violates the Constitution.”
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