'Mardiyem' highlights nightmare of the comfort women

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Being raped is every woman's nightmare. To experience it once is more than enough to turn a woman's life upside down. But there are women who had to undergo such assaults 10, 15 or even more than 30 times a day.

Who were those unfortunate women? And what kind of monsters could treat them so heartlessly?

They were the some 200,000 women who were forced to become sex slaves, or, euphemistic-speaking, comfort women for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Japanese occupation of this country during World War II.

One of them is Mardiyem. A native of Yogyakarta, she went to Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, in 1942. She went to the city in what was then known as Borneo Island to follow her neighbor and become a singer in a bid to save herself from being drafted as a servant in the Yogyakarta kraton (palace).

But instead, she was taken by the Japanese army and was kept at a place called a "comfort station". On the first day of her arrival, she was raped repeatedly. From noon until 3 p.m., six men forced her to satisfy their sexual urges. Some raped her more than once, so that she was raped a total of 11 times during the course of that three hours.

Mardiyem was only 13 at the time, a virgin of course, and had not even had her first period.

Fifty-nine years later, Mardiyem, now 74 years old, shares her tragic story during those three years of hell in this documentary film that bears her name.

The film is directed by Tomoko Kana, a 29-year-old Japanese documentary film director who had been obsessed with the idea of making a movie about comfort women, or jugun ianfu as they are known in Japanese, ever since she first learnt of their suffering at junior high school. Kana is scheduled to attend the film's screening on Tuesday as part of the Jakarta International Film Festival.

Mardiyem is Kana's first long film, and was shot between September and December of last year. Kana followed Mardiyem around, from her house in Yogyakarta to Banjarmasin, to retrace the nightmare.

She also followed Mardiyem to Tokyo, when the latter, along with three other comfort women -- Suhanah, Ema and Suharty -- testified at the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal.

In editing the film, Kana did not try to be overly dramatic. She does not have to, as the testimony of the women is already frightening enough without adding unnecessary effects. It's enough to make us, especially women, feel queazy.

It's really tragic when Mardiyem tells us how, when she found out that she was five-months pregnant, she had to undergo an abortion without anesthetic. Or how Ema shows us the scars on her stomach where her uterus was removed because it was badly damaged due to the repeated rapes. Or how most of the women now live in poverty and many of them remained unmarried as they felt ashamed, and because they couldn't have children.

The strength of this documentary lies in its quiet but moving moments. The scenes where Mardiyem is seen chain-smoking because it is the only way she can calm herself and forget the horrible memories. How she could not sleep after testifying to the tribunal. How she cried when visiting the house of her best friend and fellow comfort woman, Sukarlin, who had just passed away.

Mardiyem still has the spirit, though, to fight for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government.

"We've been fighting everywhere, but our government never helped us. It's not merely the money that we're after, but an apology and recognition from people that we were not prostitutes, but were forced to become sex slaves," she asserted.

Mardiyem; Documentary, 92 minutes; Screening today at 2.30 p.m. at the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) School of Film and Television (FFTV); For more information call (021) 325113, 325115.