EVERY Women’s Month, old grandmothers who survived the hardships of World War 2 in a brutal way not experienced by ordinary Filipinos are remembered in the media as the weeping “comfort women” whose fight for justice seems unending.
Recently, the leader of the surviving victims of sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines appealed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to make representations with Japan so that they could be paid reparations.
These comfort women, as they became to be known internationally (there were also sex slavery victims in Korea) saw some hope in their fight following the recommendation of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) last March 8 that the Philippine government initiate full reparations to the wartime comfort women.
Maria Quilantang Lalu, 87, president of Malaya Lolas (Free Grandmothers), asked the President to act fast on their request. She said “many among us are now dead and the few of us remaining do not have long to live.”
‘Perhaps President BBM should try to talk with Japan about this issue of comfort women, however discomfiting the task would be.
The plight of these old women who were victims of rape and other sexual violence during the war is really sad, considering that several of them are already bedridden, ill and senile.
Lalu’s group had tried whatever legal means can be used to press their case, and in fact filed a complaint against the government in 2019. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that the “complainants [said] they had consistently … requested that the Government of the Philippines espouse their claims and their right to reparations against the Government of Japan. Their repeated efforts, however, were dismissed by the authorities, with their last action turned down by the Supreme Court in 2014.”
CEDAW, in its decision, also cited the ordeal that Malaya Lolas went through on Nov. 23, 1944, when the group’s 24 surviving members and other women now deceased were “forcibly taken to the Bahay na Pula (Red House), the Japanese headquarters in San Ildefonso, Pampanga.”
“They were detained in the Red House for one day to three weeks, where they were repeatedly subjected to rape, other forms of sexual violence, torture, and inhumane detention conditions,” the committee said, as quoted by the OHCHR.
Lalu said more than 90 of them were still alive when they first raised their plight to the public’s attention in 1996. Almost three decades later, the survivors are down to 24.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said the government will reconsider its position that these victims were already paid reparations through its Treaty of Peace with Japan in 1956, which restored ties between the two countries. He said legislation from Congress may be necessary to act on this matter, and so he formed a study group led by Undersecretary Raul Vasquez to consider CEDAW’s decision.
The Presidential Communications Office headed by Cheloy Garafil said the government is doing something about this issue but failed to say what this something is. Perhaps President BBM should try to talk with Japan about this issue of comfort women, however discomfiting the task would be. The two governments may be able to strike a deal to settle with just these 24 or so old women and put closure to this issue once and for all.
