Comfort women to Japan PM Kishida: We demand recognition and reparations

Comfort women advocacy group reiterate calls for accountability from the Japanese government, as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is in the Philippines. (Photo from Lila Pilipina Facebook page.)

MANILA, Philippines — With the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a group of former comfort women during the Japanese occupation era reiterated calls for their recognition as well as accountability.

“With the presence of the Japanese Prime Minister Kishida now, we reiterate our demand that the Japanese government recognize the comfort women and make reparations for them. There are very few survivors of them,” advocacy group Flowers for Lolas co-convenor Teresita Ang See said on Saturday.

The group also said that there were no reparations given to the comfort women in 1945 as there was no recognition nor acknowledgement of them.

“Japan has never fully acknowledged its war crimes against Filipino women but is now calling again of war measures to the Philippine government,” Lila Pilipina executive director Sharon Cabusao-Silva added.

In history, the term comfort women has been used to describe victims of sexual abuse from Japanese soldiers during the Second World War.

In 2018, the Department of Public Works and Highways dismantled a statue representing comfort women in Roxas Boulevard, which also bore a marker of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines for a drainage improvement project.