RP `comfort women' welcome Murayama with protests
RP `comfort women' welcome Murayama with protests
MANILA (Reuter): Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama arrived in the Philippines yesterday to be confronted by angry women demanding compensation for being used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers in World War II.
A small group of former "comfort women" marched under driving rain to near Murayama's hotel to demand US$200,000 each in compensation.
"I am sure it will be brought up," Philippine Foreign Secretary Roberto Romulo told reporters, when asked if President Fidel Ramos would raise the issue of comfort women in talks with Murayama today.
"We have been working on the individual claims, so obviously we are sensitive to the issue," Romulo said.
Murayama is expected to repeat apologies for wartime atrocities as well as discussing economic and security issues with leaders of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore during his week-long swing through the region.
The Philippine also plans to raise the issue of assistance for the 605 children born to Filipino women abandoned by their Japanese fathers.
"We would like to hear what the Japanese have to say regarding that point," Romulo said.
The children were born to Filipinos working in Japan as "entertainers", usually a euphemism for prostitutes. Some 100,000 are in Japan.
Ramos will seek to boost trade with Japan to take advantage of the strong yen, by luring Japanese companies to transfer their factories to the Philippines, officials said.
He will also ask Murayama for an increase in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the Philippines, which totaled $721.5 million in 1993. Japan recently pledged over $1.0 billion in assistance for 1994.
Japan is the Philippines' biggest single donor of official aid. Total trade between the two countries reached $5.8 billion in 1993, up by 20 percent from the previous year.
The group of 50 demonstrators -- led by Rosa Henson, the first Filipino comfort woman to come out and tell her tale last year -- marched to the Manila Hotel waving banners demanding "Compensation Now".
They dispersed peacefully when police asked them.
Like a beast
About 200,000 comfort women, most of them Koreans but also Filipinos, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesians and Dutch, were forcibly recruited by the Japanese Imperial Army during the war to provide sex for their troops.
Tokyo denied the existence of the women until researchers uncovered documents in Japan implicating the government.
Amonita Balajadia, 65, and Juanita Jamot, 69, wept during a protest by 44 comfort women outside the Japanese embassy here on Monday.
"I was treated like a beast," Jamot said, shaking with anger. "Not even mountains of money will redeem my honor".
Balajadia told reporters Japanese soldiers in a Philippines camp had raped her day and night for one week when she was only 14, before 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.
Eighteen Filipinos, out of 146 cases documented by local women's groups, have filed a class suit in Tokyo demanding compensation.