Group plans to build another comfort women statue
By Robina Asido
Teresita Ang-See, the founder of the Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order, announced on Thursday their group's plan to build a new comfort women statue in the Philippines in time with the 80th anniversary of the first kamikaze takeoff in Clark Airbase during the Second World War on Friday.
"If possible, we will put up another statue very soon, but we really want the kamikaze shrine to be removed," Ang-See told reporters in a press conference in Quezon City on Thursday.
"Hopefully moving forward, we will be able to raise enough funds (for) another statue," she added.
Ang-See criticized the Philippine government for removing the first and only comfort women statue placed along Roxas Boulevard in December 2017 while continuously allowing the presence of the kamikaze statue in Pampanga.
After the statue was removed in Manila on August 2018, the comfort women statue was supposed to be re-unveiled at Baclaran Church but it has gone missing.
"It's shameful that we allow the removal of the (comfort women) statue while we are allowing the Japanese to establish shrines all over the country," she said.
"We have a list. There is a big shrine in Caliraya, then in Candaba in Pampanga. It's a kamikaze shrine. Imagine they wiped out the entire villages in Pampanga, men, women and children and now we have a shrine for them then we will remove the only (comfort) women Statue," she added.
When she visited the World War II sex slave survivors in Pampanga last July, Senator Risa Hontiveros also expressed her desire to remove and burn the kamikaze statue.
"I am not aware that there are kamikaze pilot statues... please give me a list of its locations, it should be removed and thrown into the fire," the lawmaker said.
"I was surprised to hear that there is a kamikaze memorial here in the Philippines so I really listened with all my ears and heart to the call of Malaya Lola's to remove the statue," she added. DMS
