Tokyo junks Pinay sex slaves' plea

AP, The Manila Times, 7 December 2000

TOKYO—Amid stepped-up international pressure for justice, a Japanese court on Wednesday rejected demands from Filipino women forced into sexual slavery by Japan's army during World War II for compensation and an apology.

The Tokyo High Court upheld a lower-court ruling that the government has no obligation to pay damages to the 80 Filipino women—former sex slaves and their relatives—who had demanded 920 million yen ($9 million), said court official Ikuo Morita.

Despite the setback, the plaintiffs refused to give up.

I will fight till I die, said plaintiff Carmecita Ramel. They are all criminals, the Japanese government.

The ruling comes on the same day legal authorities and activists were to open a Women's International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo on Japan's sexual slavery.

It's certainly not too late for Japan to assume responsibility, and that's what the purpose of this proceeding is, Gabrielle McDonald, the former president of the Yugoslavian War Crimes Tribunal, told Associated Press Television News.

The Dec. 8 to 12 tribunal, set up by a coalition of human rights organizations, will listen to the testimonies of former sex slaves from several Asian countries.

Its verdict, to be handed down on Tuesday, aims to call attention to the former sex slaves' decades-long fight for justice.

(The tribunal) has not yet been established by law, but the effect of it, I hope, will be to raise the level of consciousness in the international community, McDonald said.

The ruling by the Tokyo high court against the Filipino women came less than a week after it rejected a former Korean sex slave's demands for compensation.

The judge who handed down Wednesday's verdict cited an international law saying individuals are not allowed to sue a government for human right abuses, Kyodo News reported. As in previous sex slave cases, he also said the statute of limitations had expired.

Several of the original Filipino plaintiffs have died since they originally sued the government in 1993. Among them was Maria Rosa Henson, one of the first women to speak out about her experiences in a Japanese wartime brothel.

Also Wednesday, two South Korean women sued the government and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. for forcing them to work in a factory in Nagoya, western Japan, during the war.

Historians say some 200,000 women, mostly Koreans and Filipinas, were forced to work in wartime Japanese brothels.

Tokyo has acknowledged that its wartime military was systematically involved in brothel operation, but it has refused to provide direct, official compensation or an official apology to individuals.

It insists that all government-level compensation has been settled by postwar peace treaties, including its 1965 treaty with South Korea.