Citizens meet on 10th anniversary of appeal to UN on 'Sex Slaves' issue

Marking the tenth anniversary of an appeal made to the United Nations on the issue of the 'Sex Slaves,' the "U.N. NGO liaison council on forced labor or 'sex slaves' by the Japanese Army" held a rally in Tokyo on February 26.

Totsuka Etsuro, assistant professor at the Kobe University Graduate School, who worked at the UN human rights bodies as an NGO representative advocating the claims of victims of military sexual slavery by Japan from February 1992, made the keynote speech.

Totsuka charged that the Foreign Ministry engaged in negative lobbying to exclude NGOs and that the ministry's section chief concealed an International Jurist Committee report on this issue for 80 days.

Yoshikawa Haruko, House of Councilors member from the Japanese Communist Party said that she visited Indonesia from February 10 to 14 as a member of the supra-partisan women Dietmembers group to research the 'comfort women' issue.

Concerning the Japanese government's Asian Women's Fund, Yoshikawa said that the Dietmembers found that the fund was not directly paid to former 'sex slaves,' but was used for the construction of a sanatorium for old people in Indonesia.

Japan's government must apologize to former "sex slaves" and pay compensation to each of them, and the JCP is resolved to make efforts so that the Diet may enact a bill to this end jointly drafted by the Social Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan, she said. (end)