Japan should do more for victims of wartime sexual slavery, UN rights experts said at a hearing on Friday, insisting Tokyo had yet to provide full redress and reparations. Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China and the Philippines, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. “The government of Japan recognises that the comfort women issue was an afront to the honour and dignity of a large number of women,” Ambassador Masato Otaka told the committee. He also said Tokyo had “extended its maximum assistance” to a fund set up to offer medical and other support as well as “atonement money” to the former comfort women “to offer (them) realistic relief.”And he pointed to an agreement reached between Japan and South Korea in December 2015, stressing that “both countries confirmed that the comfort women issue was resolved, finally and irreversibly.”The need for dignityUnder that accord, Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women. But critics have said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for wartime abuses.

Source: The Guardian August 17, 2018 13:18 UTC