Amien seeks fair solution to comfort women issue

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Amien Rais called on Wednesday for a fair and prudent solution to the comfort women issue, saying that the matter was one of the dark periods in the country's history.

"It is important to find an equitable resolution to past problems, including the comfort women issue, for the sake of our nation's honor," Amien said after receiving four Japanese parliamentary members on Wednesday.

The four Japanese legislators are currently in Indonesia to gather more data that would support their plan to submit an act forcing the Japanese government to issue an official apology to and provide adequate compensation for Indonesian women used as sex slaves during World War II.

More than 200,000 young women from Indonesia, Korea, China, the Philippines, Taiwan and other Asian countries were taken from their families to serve as sex slaves in concentration camps located near Japanese military barracks throughout the Asia Pacific region during World War II.

Delegation leader Tomiko Okazaki of the Democratic Party of Japan told the media on Wednesday that the Japanese government still refused to recognize the existence of such an act, saying that the comfort women issue had been settled through international and bilateral agreements on war reparations.

"In separate meetings with former state minister for women's empowerment Khofifah Indar Parawansa, MPR chair Amien Rais and Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra, we found out that the matter has not been resolved," Okazaki said.

The Japanese government has already sent apology letters to Asia Pacific countries it occupied during World War II, but the Indonesian government has always insisted that it has not received any official apology from the Japanese government.

Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the independent Asian Women's Fund (AWF) organization on March 25, 1997, which handed over a total of 380 million Japanese yen (some US$2.8 million) collected from donors to establish houses where there were reported concentrations of former comfort women, or jugun ianfu in Japanese.

"But doubts remain that the compensation reached the victims," said Okazaki, adding that the MOU with AWF should be revised because it did not allow for direct compensation for each of the victims.

However, Yusril said that personal compensation would encounter enormous difficulties when it came to proving that an elderly woman was formerly a comfort woman, as many of them women had refused to reveal the truth about their past.

He also said that although the administration of President Megawati Soekarnoputri was very much concerned with the issue, it had yet to issue an official stance on the proposed revision of the MOU with AWF.

The Indonesian government could not possibly be involved in drafting the act seeking an official apology from the Japanese government.

"We cannot give support to the making of the act because it is an internal political matter for Japan ... but I think the MOU should be revised because the compensation, which currently totals only Rp 775 million (less than $720,000), was too small for more than 10,000 reported victims," Yusril told The Jakarta Post.