Redress for the 'comfort women'

Catholic New Times, Feb 23, 2003 by Rosemary Ganley

The Hague: Final Judgement and Breaking the History of Silence: the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slaverydirected and produced by Video Juku, Japan, 2001.

The exciting thing about this new documentary on two videos, The Hague: Final Judgement (33 minutes) and Breaking the History of Silence: the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal (68 minutes), available from KAIROS Ecumenical Justice Initiatives in Toronto, is that it again demonstrates, this time in the Asian context, the power of the people.

Evil deeds, even long in the past, will be unearthed and exposed. When the state fails in its moral duty to take responsibility for crimes in its name, the people will ultimately rise to do so.

Half a century after the end of the Second World War, these public trials, in 2001, indicting Japan for war crimes against women in its occupied countries from 1937-1945, were conducted by the global civil society: judges, lawyers, survivors and NGOs from nine countries who paid scrupulous attention to due process, careful evidence and credible witnesses.

At the end of the seven-day tribunal, held in Kudan Hall, Tokyo, and ignored by the Japanese government, a panel of three international judges--from Argentina, Kenya and the UK--issued a 245-page judgment convicting nine senior Japanese military officers and Emperor Hirohito himself of crimes against humanity, sexual slavery and organized rape. It was a watershed event, little noticed in the West, but having profound implications for the status of women worldwide.

The Tokyo Tribunal, as it was called, was a people's trial three years in preparation. This was the ghastly story of the "comfort women"--thousands of Asian women in eight countries kidnapped and coerced into hostels (as many as 140 locations on Okinawa alone), beaten and raped at the hands of Japanese soldiers in an officially sanctioned and organized "service," which" was part of the war effort.

The tribunal brought 64 surviving comfort women to testify. Their lined and tortured faces are shown in harrowing footage on the film; women, now aged, mostly feeble, numbering in the hundreds, with unhealed wounds of body and soul. The witnesses were helped to the stand by young Japanese women offering them lilies. Thirteen-hundred media representatives and ordinary Japanese citizens filled the hall wanting the truth, awful as it might be, to come out and a new generation become educated.

Eminent jurists and experts in trauma, in war history and in languages gave density to the first person accounts. It was a display of people's knowledge, power and moral indignation at its finest, all under the calm leadership of Chief Judge Gabriella McDonald. Witnesses came from the Philippines, Taiwan, North and South Korea (which collected evidence and presented their indictment together), Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and China.

The tribunal applied human rights law to which Japan had committed itself, as it existed the law as it has developed since. Two aged Japanese men testified that they took part in rapes of foreign women as part of a racist mentality and a hatred of the nationality of the women they abused.

"Rape went along with fighting the war," said Obe Katsui. "Women were gathered as supplies."

Some "comfort women" were visited by up to 40 men a day, tortured if they did not submit. Many tried to escape. "Rape," said co-prosecutor Patricia Viseur- Sellers, "is condemned by all civilizations as a crime against women. Ending the official impunity which has surrounded those responsible for the suffering of the 'comfort women' is crucial for our time." An observer from Bosnia nodded her agreement.

This searing tribunal and its judgment have been documented in two videos by Video Juku, a women's group that creates documentaries in order to achieve a society free of violence and discrimination against women.

Women's study groups, theology courses, university classes, human-rights seminars and gatherings of interested citizens of all kinds will welcome this story of the Tokyo Tribunal in video format and find much to be learned from its conclusions about violence, gender and militarism in both past and present centuries.

The Hague and Breaking the History of Silence can be obtained (on loan) from KAIROS Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, 129 St. Clair Ave. West, Toronto, ON. Contact Maire O'Brien, Asia Desk at www.kairoscanada.org or www.video-juku@jca.apc.org