"Japanese Government Guilty of Drafting Comfort Women"

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, December 06, 2001

"Japanese Government Guilty of Drafting Comfort Women"

Women`s International Criminal Court for War Crime Tribunal found the Japanese Government guilty on Dec. 4, pronouncing that Japan`s administrating the system of comfort women for the military during World War II fell into a case of `rape approved by the nation`.

The court uncovered a over 240-page written document at the second trial held in Hague, Netherlands, "The comfort women system was planned, legislated, administered and promoted by the Japanese Government and Military." and concluded, "The top-ranking political and military leaders of Japan at that time must have been informed of the existence of comfort women."

Accordingly, the court insisted on a public apology and compensation from the Japanese Government, and demanded the Allied Nations against Japan during World War II to release the documents containing the records about comfort women and the reasons why they did not press charges against the late Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the war.

The court ruled, "The comfort Women system was certainly a `highly controlled and institutionalized system`, in that the comfort rooms, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, were watched by armed guards, that some women were raped in the comfort rooms that was temporarily built in caves by soldiers waiting for their turns with tickets in their hands."

In addition, the court clarified where the responsibility lied, pronouncing, "The Japanese Government is also responsible for the matter of comfort women, which has gone unpunished for 56 years, and has not made a sufficient public-apology or enough reparations." The court adjudged additionally that eight politicians and military commanders including Prime Minister of that time were guilty.

At the first trial held in Tokyo, Japan in December of last year, the late Emperor Hirohito was found guilty of crime against humanity on the ground of administrating the comfort women system. Women`s International Criminal Court for War Crimes was established as private organization to push forward the punishment for the crime of Japanese military sexual slavery and the reparations for its victims which had not been undertaken in Japan as well as in the international society.

According to AFP News, the court, which consisted of four judges who specialized in the international law, including the presiding judge Gabriel Kirk McDonald, former President of the International Criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, did not carry legal binding force, but would work as enormous moral and symbolic pressures upon Japan.

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