Comfort women criticize Japanese foreign ministry statement
A group of Filipino comfort women criticized the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ claim that Japan had expressed “deep remorse” over their issue and that it was settled under the 1956 San Francisco Treaty.
In a statement released Saturday, Lila Pilipina said Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Deputy Press Secretary Kaneko Mariko’s statement was a “clear misrepresentation of historical facts in order to justify the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) and make it acceptable to the Filipino people”.
The group said this declaration was made in response to their call for the Japanese government to give reparations to Filipino comfort women.
“The Japanese government has never genuinely apologized to Filipino “Comfort Women” and other wartime rape victims,” Lila Pilipina said.
“Private letters of apology sent by Japanese state leaders in the 1990s did not carry the weight of a full and official apology,'' it added.
The establishment of an Asian Women’s Fund following these letters likewise do not indicate genuine remorse as the funds were actually donations by private citizens and were not in any way, reparations for the harm done by the Japanese imperial government which should carry the full responsibility for these crimes. Neither was the institutionalization of teachings about its wartime atrocities, a key demand of the justice for “comfort women” movement, seriously carried out,” Lila Pilipina said.
Lila Pilipina also cited that during former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s term, the Japanese government implemented a policy of “denialism”, even preventing the establishment of comfort women memorials in the world.
They said that in 2018, it led to the removal of two comfort women statues in the Philippines at the request of Japanese officials.
The group also said that the post-war reparations were mostly in the form of goods and construction of infrastructure, while only a small percentage went to veterans.
“The Foreign Ministry’s statement is nothing but an echoing of the Japanese government’s denialist line that the claims have already been settled under the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 and the Japan-Philippines Reparations Agreement of 1956,” Lila Pilipina said.
“In truth, the post-war reparations paid by Japan came mainly in the form of Japanese capital goods and services for infrastructure-building, with only a tiny percentage going to Filipino war veterans. Individual victims - whether of sex slavery, forced labor, or other brutal crimes, were never seriously considered in the reparations package,” it said.
“The reparations paid by Japan did not solely benefit the Philippine economy. They also benefitted Japan which gained from the sale of capital goods to the Philippines and from debt payments, for the significant portion of the “reparations” came in the form of loans. Thus, this started the unequal trade pattern of the Philippines becoming a lucrative market for Japanese goods and services up to the present,” it added.
Lila Pilipina said wartime victims have to be wary about the country’s RAA with Japan because of its “seemingly contradictory provisions pertaining to jurisdiction over erring Japanese soldiers”. Jaspearl Tan/DMS
