Amien seeks fair solution to comfort women issue

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.