Japan activists: 'comfort women' is not HR abuse
- From: ** <**@.org>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:33:00 +0800
Japan activists: 'comfort women' is not HR abuse
TOKYO
14-Jul-07
JAPANESE conservative activists on yesterday protested US congressional demands
for a clear apology over wartime sexual slavery, saying the women were not
slaves but just making money.
Lawmakers, academics and journalists gave the US embassy a protest letter saying
they were 'surprised and shocked' by the US pressure for a fresh apology to
so-called 'comfort women.'
"If America keeps saying this is a human rights issue, then what were the
indiscriminate bombings on Tokyo and other cities? What were the atomic
bombings?" said Shoichi Watanabe, history professor emeritus at Tokyo's Sophia
University.
"Those were planned to kill ordinary people, a holocaust. Compared with this
human-rights issue, prostitution in battlefields is only a commercial act," he
told a news conference after filing the protest with the US embassy.
A US House committee last month overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for
an 'unambiguous' apology from Japan for the up to 200,000 women who served in
army brothels before and during World War II.
In their letter to be distributed to US members of Congress, the activists said
they felt 'anger and sadness because the resolution is based on wrong
information.'
"No sex slaves existed for Japanese military," the letter said. "Professional
camp followers were providing prostitution," it said.
"There were only business organisations and prostitutes to make money from
soldiers."
"This is the indisputable historical fact," it said, urging US Congress members
to reinvestigate and retract last month's resolution.
Kimindo Kusaka, a right-wing author, said women from Japan initially went to
front-line brothels but a shortage made Koreans recruit women from the low
classes in the peninsula.
"They paid when they recruited the girls _ as an advance payment, a loan to the
fathers with their daughters held jointly liable," Kusaka told the news
conference.
"It was probably a severe blow to the girls, but it was their dads who betrayed
them. It was their mums who betrayed them."AFP
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