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.