Japan reacts coolly to "comfort women" report

Japan reacts coolly to "comfort women" report

TOKYO (Reuter): Japan has reacted coolly to a report by an international jurists' group urging it to pay financial compensation to Asian women used as sex slaves for its soldiers during World War II.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi said on Tuesday that Japan was already examining ways of addressing the so-called "comfort women" issue through ways other than individual compensation.

The Asahi Simbun newspaper said Igarashi's remarks indicated Tokyo had no intention of changing its stance against individual compensation.

In its report entitled Comfort Women, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said Japan had a moral and legal duty to make financial restitution.

The report details how the Japanese army set up a system to force sex on an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 girls and women. Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, Indonesian, Korean, Malayan, Taiwanese and other women and girls, often just 13 years old, were used in brothels and "sexual services" were extracted through "unimaginable violence and cruelty", the report said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Terusuke Terada said on Tuesday: "It is not appropriate to make a government-level comment towards a report compiled by a NGO (non government organization)."

The report was based on an ICJ mission to the Philippines, North Korea, South Korea and Japan in April 1993 when two female jurists interviewed more than 40 victims, three former soldiers and government representatives.

Japan insists that the question of war reparations, either to states or to individuals, was settled under the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty and subsequent bilateral treaties.

But as a new apology for war atrocities, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in August announced a $1 billion fund to be used over the next 10 years for exchange programs and to build vocational training centers for women.

The ICJ has deemed Tokyo's offer insufficient. The commission, composed of 45 eminent jurists, promotes the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights worldwide.

Some nations, including South Korea and Malaysia, have said they would not seek additional reparations for comfort women.