MOSCOW, August 7 (RIA Novosti) - Japan has failed to pursue a comprehensive resolution of the issue of wartime sexual slavery, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay said in an official statement.
“During my visit to Japan in 2010, I appealed to the Government to provide effective redress to the victims of wartime sexual slavery. Now, as my tenure in office comes to an end, it pains me to see that these courageous women, who have been fighting for their rights, are passing away one by one, without their rights restored and without receiving the reparation to which they are entitled,” Pillay said.
In June, Tokyo released a review on the issue of so-called “comfort women”, which stated that “it was not possible to confirm that women were forcefully recruited.”
Following the release of this report, a group in Tokyo publicly stated that “comfort women were not sex slaves but wartime prostitutes.”
In response, Pillay said that “such statements must cause tremendous agony to the women, but we have not seen any public rebuttal by the Government.”
After the UN Human Right Committee advised Japan to prosecute wartime perpetrators, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that “our country’s consistent position has been that the issue of comfort women has been settled between Japan and South Korea” back in 1965 by a bilateral agreement.
However, earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported that South Korea plans to publish a white paper on the issue of comfort woman with the comprehensive analysis of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery crimes.
“We plan to translate the white paper into various languages such as English, Chinese, and Japanese and distribute it worldwide so that the international community know the truth behind the issue of Japan’s military sexual enslavement,” the Wall Street Journal quoted South Korean Minister Kim Hee-jung as saying.
Comfort women are girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the World War II. Many of the women were from the occupied countries, such as Korea, China and the Philippines. Estimate numbers of the women involved vary significantly according to different sources, ranging from 20,000 to 400,000. Various survivors’ reports revealed that comfort women were often beaten and tortured.
