Filipino `comfort women' angrily await Murayama
Filipino `comfort women' angrily await Murayama
MANILA (Reuter): Dozens of Filipino former "comfort women", some in tears and screaming with anger, demanded US$200,000 each in compensation from Japan yesterday on the eve of a visit by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama.
The women, in a rally outside the Japanese embassy in Manila's Makati financial center, rejected a reported plan by Japan to set up job training programs for Asian women to show remorse for atrocities by its soldiers during World War Two.
Murayama arrives in Manila today for a three-day visit as part of a four-nation tour of Asia.
The welcome he will receive in Manila will be mixed with requests from officials for more economic assistance and demands for money from women used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during the war.
Amonita Balajadia, 65, and Juanita Jamot, 69, wept during the protest by 44 comfort women outside the embassy.
The women, now white-haired grandmothers, demanded 20 million yen ($200,000) in compensation for their ordeals.
"Japan, you are a rich nation now. Why don't you listen to the people you raped? Pay us individual compensation because that's what we need," Balajadia shouted through a megaphone.
"I was treated like a beast," Jamot said, shaking with anger. "Not even mountains of money will redeem for my honor."
Balajadia told reporters Japanese soldiers had raped her day and night for one week at a camp in the northern province of Isabela when she was only 14. She said she managed to escape.
Jamot said she was 18 when the Japanese abducted her in Manila and took turns raping her for three weeks before she also managed to escape.
The women handed an embassy employee a letter for Murayama urging him to immediately grant their demands "before we die".
Historians estimate the number of so-called comfort women at 200,000, most of them Koreans but also including Filipinas, Chinese, Taiwanese and Indonesians.
Eighteen Filipino women, out of 146 cases documented by local women's groups, have filed a class suit in Tokyo demanding compensation.
President Fidel Ramos is expected to ask Murayama for assistance for the comfort women but will not directly ask for compensation, diplomats said.
Children
On another humanitarian issue, they said Ramos will also ask for assistance for 605 children born to Filipino women but abandoned by their Japanese fathers.
Around 100,000 Filipino women work in Japan as "entertainers", usually a euphemism for prostitutes. Thousands more work in the domestic entertainment industry that depends heavily on Japanese customers.
Ramos will also seek increased trade with Japan and an increase in its official development assistance (ODA) to the Philippines which amounted to $721.5 million in 1993.
Japan is the Philippines' biggest single donor of official aid. Total trade reached $5.8 billion in 1993, up 20 percent from the previous year.
"Prime Minister Murayama is coming at a time when economic relations are growing at a faster pace than before in terms of trade and ODA," a Philippine official said.