Hearing on Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women by Ok Cha Soh, Ph. D.

137 名前：煽ってるのはアメリカだがな[な] 投稿日：2012/06/11(月) 05:01:30.33 ID:Sg3lobj00 [2/13]

2007年のコットラーとワシントン・バイブルカレッジの Soh教授の主張では、日本軍が構築した国際的な慰安婦ネットワークの被害者数は20万人に上り、その大半はコリアンだったが日本軍は中国、台湾、フィリピン、オランダ、そしてインドネシアの女性や子供も捕獲し虐待した。
こうであり、韓国はこの数字をそっくりそのままコリアン慰安婦記念碑にきざんだ。
韓国という国は、小耳にはさんだ話や数字をそっくりそのまま拡大解釈するという傾向がある。
よって、吹き込まれた話を鵜呑みにしている可能性もある。

現在では、コリアン女性の被害者だけで20万人と既成事実化されているが、来年の今ごろには日本が、アジアを股に掛けて数百万人規模の女性と子供を奴隷化し、人身売買を行っていた国際的なシンジケートだったことにされているかもな。国連が掲げる、human trafficking　(人身売買）撲滅のための象徴例として、日本をさらし者にすることでいったい誰が何を得るのか。http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/soh021507.htm

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/soh021507.htm

Statement of
Ok Cha Soh, Ph. D.

Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment
Committee on Foreign Affairs
U.S. House of Representatives

Hearing on Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women
Thursday, February 15, 2007

Chairman Faleomavaega and Members of the Subcommittee:

It is an honor to appear before you this afternoon. I am grateful to the Chairman that this important topic is the first to be addressed in a hearing by the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment during the 110th Congress.

I appreciate the opportunity to share this panel with Dr. Mindy Kotler, who has done such significant work in bringing the issue of Comfort Women to the attention of the public, the press, and policymakers like yourselves.

I also am grateful for the remarks of Representative Michael Honda, who by introducing House Resolution 121 has taken on the mantle of your former colleague, Congressman Lane Evans of Illinois, who before his retirement last year championed the issue of Comfort Women through indefatigable efforts. Congressman Honda deserves much praise for his willingness to continue this effort.

Mr. Chairman,

We see the present through the past and see the future through the present.

The term “Comfort Women” is a euphemism referring to young women and girls who were tricked or abducted into sexual slavery during World War II by the Japanese Imperial government’s Ken Pei Tai security police and the Imperial Military. The total number of victims is unknown. Most experts agree that as many as 200,000 women and girls became sexual slaves in an international network of brothels and rape camps organized under Japanese government sponsorship for use by Japanese officers and enlistees. The large majority of the victims were Koreans, but the Japanese military also captured and used Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Dutch, and Indonesian women in this system. This wartime rape has been identified as a war crime and as a crime against fundamental human rights. It is simultaneously recognized as a form of slavery and trafficking in women and children.

Over six decades have passed since the end of World War II, yet the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army still remain as grief and sorrow in the heart of each individual; the wounds of the victims are yet to be healed. It has been almost 15 years since we began to pay attention to the long-concealed history of sex slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. Stripped of their dignity and robbed of their honor even in their home countries, surviving Comfort Women were forced for many years to live their lives under the veil of shame, silently shouldering the burden of their horrific experience.

It is indeed difficult for them to stand up as witness to the crimes committed against them. The consequences of revealing their long-kept stories may lead to embarrassment and pain. Nevertheless, they broke the silence to proclaim that they can not die in peace unless they receive an official apology and reparations from the Japanese government during their life time. To resolve the issue of sexual slavery during WWII, the surviving Comfort Women strenuously knocked on the doors of the United Nations, the International Labor Organization, numerous non-governmental organizations, and many other international human right groups. As a result, many international organizations have repeatedly petitioned the Japanese government to accept its responsibilities and to extend appropriate reparations to the victims.

Thus far, the Japanese government has largely ignored these recommendations and has failed to come forward with a minimally adequate apology, as I will disclose in a moment. The handful of surviving victims today are still anxiously awaiting justice. Time is running out for these women because the survivors are advanced in age. They have waited a very long time. We believe they should wait no longer. As time passes by, more and more victims are passing away.

Racial, Ethnic, and Class Discrimination against Comfort Women

Overall, the Comfort Women system, defined as sexual slavery, is clearly an international crime regardless the ethnic and racial background of the individual Comfort Women. The women were treated as objects and used as property, deprived of their free will and liberty, and forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese Imperial Army. But in addition to this, there is ample evidence of pervasive and often violent discrimination within the Comfort Women system. [1], [2], [3], [4]. Women of non-Japanese or non-European origin were generally treated even worse in terms of conditions of life in the comfort stations. They face beatings and summary executions much more often. The evidence shows that indigenous women were treated most brutally of all. In short, the Japanese discriminated according to race, ethnicity, and poverty.

There was also post-war racial discrimination of Comfort Women by the Allied forces, including the United States. At the end of World War II, the Japanese were defeated. Naturally, the power of dealing with the war crimes was in the hands of Allied forces, the United States. If those 200,000 girls and women who were subject to this brutal sexual slavery had been primarily European or American whites, do you think that the issue of the surviving Comfort Women would have kept ignored as it has been for all these years?

The example of the Batavia Trial speaks eloquently for this. In 1946, an Allied Military Tribunal convicted Washio Awochi and other Japanese war criminals for kidnapping Dutch nurses and forcing them into sexual slavery. Awochi was sentenced to ten years in military prison for his crime. That trial is often cited today as a key legal precedent in prosecution of suspects who organize mass rapes in war time as a crime against humanity. However, the Allied Tribunal concerned only crimes against Dutch women who happened to be in Asia at the outbreak of the war. Awochi surely deserved punishment for crimes against these women. Nevertheless, the fact remains that no Japanese government official, military officer or corporation was ever prosecuted for the far larger, longer-running, and even more deadly organized crimes committed against hundreds of thousands of Asian women during World War II. In particular, the Intelligence Services of our country, the United States, had clear evidence at the time of the criminal nature and operation of Japan’s systematic sexual slavery of these women and girls, yet the U.S. did not bring charges against those who had persecuted and murdered these women.

It is no secret that at that time there were pervasive, demeaning stereotypes of Asian cultures in general and Asian women in particular that were common in the West. Whether it was intentional or not, these prejudices had the practical effect of protecting the criminals who approved and operated the Comfort Women system of sexual slavery from prosecution for their crimes.

Japan’s continuing refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the war crimes is not only an injustice for surviving comfort women. As important as that is, Japan’s present actions undermine international law, particularly law against organized rape and sexual enslavement during war. This affects not only World War II survivors, but also women from Yugoslavia, Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world where rape recently has been used a weapon of war. The issue before us today is not simply redress for a historical wrong, it is also essential to the success of future prosecutions of criminals who use rape as a weapon of war.

Asian Women’s Fund

The former Japanese prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama offered a “near apology” for war time atrocities against Korea, China, and other Asian nations and announced the establishment of a private fund for payments to surviving Comfort Women. The private fund plan explicitly rejected Japanese governmental responsibility for the system of military brothels. The Comfort Women themselves and many supporters strongly criticized the private fund plan.

The private fund, called the Asian Women’s Fund, was headed by Mrs. Miki Mutusko, widow of former Prime Minister, Miki Takeo. In 1996, she resigned as Chair of the Asian Women’s Fund, protesting her own government’s delay in offering apologies and the lack of sufficient public interest in fund. The fund’s announced goal was to raise $20 million, but actually raised only about one quarter of that. It has issued payments directly to 285 former Comfort Women. The 285 women undoubtedly represent a very small percentage of former Comfort Women, some in the Philippines and Taiwan, but not many in Korea. The majority of surviving Comfort Women, especially in Korea, refused to accept the funds. There are several reasons for this. The South Korean government and other governments at last began providing old age pensions and medical help to many survivors. For example, equally important, without a minimally acceptable official apology from the Japanese government, many Comfort Women regarded the Japanese money as a thinly veiled insult—a perception that was re-enforced by public comments from Japanese officials.
For quite some time now, the issue of payment of reparations to Comfort Women has not been about the money as such, which is almost negligible in Japan economy. The issue is responsibility. In the absence of an unequivocal spoken apology from the Japanese government, the payment of reparations would not constitute acceptance of responsibility for past acts. Japan today seeks to avoid payment of reparations for the same reason. It has failed to make a clear apology: it is unwilling, or unable, to accept responsibility for the crimes it committed, even in the egregious case of enslavement, rape and murder of thousands of women and girls.

The Asian Women’s Fund requires any surviving Comfort Women to sign legal papers that would end any legal rights she has to seek redress in the courts of any country for the suffering she has faced at the hands of the Japanese government or Japanese corporations. Similarly, the supposed ‘atonement’ fund refuses to pay damages to the families of Comfort Women who were murdered during World War II or died during the 50-plus years between 1945 and when the fund was created. This practice raises questions. If the fund is truly intended to express remorse and atonement for crimes committed, though what sort of logic does it now require the surviving Comfort Women to abandon their rights?
The Asia Women’s Fund is to be disbanded on March 31, 2007, just a few weeks from today.

Apology Issues

The Japanese government has acted specifically to avoid responsibility for clearly recognized international crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, crimes such as mass impressments of women into slavery, trafficking in slaves, organized rape, massacres of Comfort Women in Burma and in other war zones, horrific medical ‘treatments’ calculated to induce sterility, torture, and extrajudicial executions of women who refused or became too ill to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.

During the past 15 years a few Japanese government officials have made near-apology statements regarding Comfort Women issues. Nevertheless, even the personal spokesman for former Prime Minister Murayama specifically denied under questioning that the Prime Minster had acknowledged that there was a ‘system or organization’ committing crimes against these women, and specifically denied that the Japanese Imperial Army was responsible for obvious and well-documented crimes. It is also worth noting that Murayama was the only Prime Minister from an opposition party elected since 1945 and that his term in office was cut short due to rejection by their military and Diet of even his weakly worded statement of regret. He failed to obtain support in the Diet for an official apology by a margin of almost 2 to 1. In the end, Murayama’s remorse has been directly rejected by subsequent governments, who have preferred to water such statements down even further.
This rejection stance is embraced to this day by many of the most senior figures in the Japanese government, including the increasingly influential armed forces. One of the recent examples is the ongoing rejection of responsibility for war crimes by the current education minister, who has barred textbooks that even mention the abuse of comfort women until the government can come up with an even more innocuous explanation for how these were treated.

Ranking members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) speak openly of seeking a ‘biological solution to the Comfort Women problem.’ These men do not face sanctions or reprimands from LDP leaders. The ‘biological solution’ group favors refusing to make any acknowledgment of crimes against these Comfort Women, reasoning that once they die, the anger at the Japanese government will die with them.

Furthermore, the Japanese government today refuses to assist the U.S. Department of Justice in identifying World War II-era criminals responsible for crimes against Comfort Women, U.S. prisoners of war, and for biological warfare experimentation on prisoners. The U.S. Department of Justice is mandated to exclude such people from traveling to the United States, and has repeatedly requested records and other routine assistance in this task from the Japanese Ministry of Justice. Japan’s government refuses to cooperate. How can this be squared with that government’s claims of accepting responsibility for its WWII era crimes?

The excuse that the issue is over 60 years old is also weak. It was not until the 1980s, for example, that the United States formally apologized and paid compensation -- $20,000 per person -- for the illegal internment of Japanese Americans during the WWII and it took 46 years for the United States fully apologize for its actions.

I do not agree that Japan’s current government has ever frankly acknowledged that the Japanese Imperial Army played a central determinative and organizing role in crimes against these Comfort Women. Not even close. Public relations gestures simply do not add up to an apology, most particularly when even that gesture has been subsequently rejected by the government.

Legal Issues

Fifteen former Comfort Women filed suit in U.S. District court in September 2000, seeking redress from the Japanese government and from corporations under the terms of the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act. After many years of court hearings and petitions, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in February 2006 that the claims of the women constituted non-judicial “political questions,” Thus leaving it to the Executive Branch to seek redress for these women. The Executive Branch has not been helpful. Indeed, it went out of its way to frustrate the Comfort Women’s legal petition. There is a striking difference between how the Executive Branch has aggressively assisted certain claims made by the Holocaust victims and other Europeans against Germany after the WWII, yet has ignored, denied or even obstructed similar claims made by Asian victims seeking reparations from the Japanese government and corporations.

This inconsistency can also be found in the U.S. government’s position concerning slave-labor victims from Europe and forced laborers during Japan’s war time expansion. Japan has paid reparations for exploitation of slave laborers to several countries (including the Netherlands and Switzerland) and Japan is now responsible for making equal settlements with other countries. But the United States has not sought reparations on behalf of surviving U.S. nationals who survived slave labor at Japanese corporations.

Overall, the difference between modern Japan’s reaction to crimes against humanity during WWII is strikingly different from that of modern Germany. Germany has formally apologized and compensated many victims. Japan refuses. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has tacitly accepted Japan’s refusal, and at some points even abetted it.

One standard – and unconvincing -- argument is that Japan has already addressed their obligations under the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. The Treaty mandated that Japan enter into reparations agreements with Allied countries, whose territories had been occupied by Japan. The United States negotiated this treaty, while China, Taiwan, and North and South Korea, who were most directly affected by the Japanese war machine, were not allowed to participate. Further, in 1951, correspondence with the Dutch government, Japan agreed that the 1951 Treaty did not bar individual damage claims arising form the war. But today, Japan has discarded that statement and now says that such claims are barred by the Treaty. Perhaps most fundamentally, Japan today claims that its government-to-government deals in 1951 have freed it from either moral or legal responsibility to frankly admit, either in words or in deed, its responsibility for the crimes of the Comfort Women system. Our view is that the 1951 treaty cannot block private litigation even it was intended to waive reparations between governments.

The Japan-Korea Basic Treaty was signed in 1965. In the Treaty, the issues of Comfort Women were not discussed at that time. Funds paid to Korea under the Treaty were focused on the overall economic modernization of Korea as a whole, rather than for individual compensation.

Comfort Women issues at the U.N. and ILO

The issues of military sexual slavery by Japan was raised at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in 1992. Radhika Coomaraswamy (1996) and Gay McDougall (1998), special rapporteurs on systematic rape, sexual slavery, and slavery-like practices during wartime for
the Sub-Commission subsequently visited Korea and other Asian countries, interviewing dozens of surviving Comfort Women and experts in international humanitarian law. Their
formal reports to the United Nations unequivocally stated that Japan has violated international human right laws. Both recommended that Japanese government accept the demands of victims for formal apology and legal reparations. A parallel investigation by the expert committee appointed by the International Labor Organization reached much the same conclusions.

In September 2001, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights made concluding observations concerning the Comfort Women issues. The Committee expresses its concerns that compensation offered to wartime Comfort Women by the Asian Women’s Fund, which is primarily financed through private funding, has not been deemed an acceptable measure by the women concerned. [5] Precisely because it was viewed as a device through which the Japanese government was attempting to evade its responsibilities rather than fulfill them. The U.N. Committee urged Japan to find an appropriate arrangement in consultation with the organizations representing the Comfort Women a means to compensate the victims in a manner that would meet their expectations, before it is too late. The Committee also urged Japan to ensure that school textbooks and other teaching materials present these issues in a fair and balanced fashion, which reflects the aims and objectives of education. Finally the Committee requested that Japanese government submit a report to the U.N. detailing the steps that it had taken to fulfill these requests. Special rapporteur Coomaraswamy completed her nine year term in 2004, she reported that the Japanese government had still not fulfilled its obligations for apology and redress for victims of military sexual slavery.

To date, the Japanese government’s effort efforts to carry out the U.N. recommendations has been clearly inadequate. [6] In 2005, 42 million people signed a worldwide petition saying that the Japanese government should not be granted a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council unless they admit the issues of Japanese military sexual slavery and officially apologize for those war crimes committed during WWII. These petitions were part of the reason that Japan was not granted a permanent seat on the United Security Council.

Conclusion

Japanese government continues to reject its responsibility for systematic sexual slavery, rape and other crimes against the Comfort Women of WWII. It is in Japan’s own interest, as well as in the best interests of the U.S.-Japanese relations, for the present Japanese government to squarely face its obligations under international law.

We request that the Japanese government openly acknowledge and accept the responsibility for the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial government and Army during WWII.

They should open the archives that are now in the Japanese government’s hands of Japan’s Imperial government, military, and corporations and encourage research in these files. They should assist governments around the world in investigating and prosecuting Japanese Imperial-era criminals, particularly those responsible for crimes against Comfort Women. Finally the Japanese government should encourage open study and discussion of Imperial-era Japanese government and military crimes. They should publicly repudiate current Japanese officials who demean and attack surviving Comfort Women, or who promote ‘biological solutions’ to Japan’s historical problems.

Permit me to recall former Congressman Lane Evans, who used to say regarding Comfort Women: “I believe we have a duty; we have a duty to help those who need our help. We have a duty to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves…..Because in the end, people will remember not the words of their enemies, but the silence of their friends. We must not remain silent.”

It is our duty that we give those women the dignity and the respect they deserve.

Chairman Faleomavaega, thank you once again for the invitation to appear before you today. I will be happy to answer any questions you or the Members of the Subcommittee might have.



Bibliography

1. Kim-Gibson, DaiSil, Silence Broken, 1999.

2. Choi Schellstede SangMie (ed.), Comfort Women Speak, the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, Inc., 2000.

3. Stets, M. & Bonnie Oh, (eds.), Legacies of the Comfort Women of WWII., 2001

4. People’s Tokyo Tribunal, 2000, documented, pp. 238-239

5. United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Concluding Observations of the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Japan, 24/09/2001

6. United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Comments by States parties on Concluding Observations: Japan, 29/11/2002