Comfort women issue not expected to be raised during Marcos' Japan visit —DFA exec

An official from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Wednesday said the issue of comfort women is not expected to be raised during President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s working visit to Japan next week. 

At a Palace press briefing, DFA Assistant Secretary Neal Imperial, however, pointed out that the matter was already considered as "settled."

"We don't expect it to be raised but the position of the Philippines on this issue is that compensation claims by former comfort women is considered to be already settled as far as the government is concerned," Imperial said.

"All war-related claims are deemed to have been settled by our 1956 reparations agreement with Japan," he added.

The DFA official, however, said the Philippine government "will not prevent private claims should such actions be pursued by victims on their behalf."

"We will not stop the victims as this is an atrocious violence against women during the war," Imperial said.

A number of Filipino women were forced into prostitution and sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II.

The issue of the comfort women was first made public when three Korean women came out during the Asian Conference on Traffic in Women in December 1991 to recount how they were made sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II.

More than 65 bona fide members of Lila Pilipina, an organization of Filipino comfort women, have died since they started taking up the issue in 1991.

Reports said that in April 1993, eighteen comfort women from the Philippines filed a class action lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court to seek ¥360 million from the Japanese government.

The lawsuits were based on the provisions of the 1907 Hague Treaty protecting civilians in military-occupied territories and both Japanese and Philippine laws.

Their suits were also appealed and dismissed in 1993, 1998, and 2000.

Meanwhile, in a separate statement, the Lila Filipina urged Japan to acknowledge its war crimes against Asian nations and take necessary measures toward a "fair and long overdue resolution" of the comfort women issue.

"We are outraged that Japan has chosen to once again ignore the issue of its wartime military sex slavery of thousands of Asian women in the fourth human rights report it submitted to the UN Human Rights Council," the group said.

The group stressed that Japan was silent on the issue despite mentioning its achievements in various human rights areas.

It said Japan also ignored recommendations made by other nations, including China and South Korea, to finally address the matter. —KG, GMA Integrated News