Taiwan Church News

3312 Edition

August 17 - 23, 2015

Church Ministry

After Abe's Speech, Taiwan Feminist Groups Ask Japan An Official Apology To Comfort Women

Reported by Lin Yi-yin

Though the Japan Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was generally reckoned for his well-prepared speech for the 70thanniversary of war end on August 14, his lip service as "engraved in our heart" without any actual pledge to compensate for the suffering of the recruited or enforced comfort women irritated the feminist or human rights groups across Asia.

To express their protest to Abe's stance on comfort women, Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation(TWRF) held arally before Taipei's Interchange Association Japan in the evening on August 14.

Ms Hwang Su-ling, chairwoman of TWRF, lamented that it was a 20 years' tug of war with Japan government to make the sexual exploitation of comfort women finally recognized by UN as a systematic sexual abuse in the military. And it was indeed a war crime with the mask of sexual violence, said Hwang.

Ms Kan Su-hwa, executive secretary of TWRF, remarked that since the first Korean comfort woman, Kim Hak-sun, stood out to tell the injury and trauma brought to the comfort women on August 14, 1991, this period of tragic history of Asian women would never be forgotten. As the third International Memorial Day of "Comfort Women" - August 14 - was also the day Shinzo Abe delivered his memorial speech, his stance on comfort women deserved to be checked in details, said Hwang.

Many feminist and human rights groups in Taipei also came to join into this protest, including The Garden of Hope Foundation, Modern Women's Foundation, Labor Rights Association, Amnesty International Taiwan, Taiwan Women Alliance, Awakening Foundation and etc. Kinds of art performances, like poetry reading, short play, music concert, drama and visual arts, were utilized to commemorate those comfort women alive and deceased. The name of "comfort women" was also proposed to re-named as "enforced sexual slave".

Translated by Peter Wolfe