Subject: [cwj 137] High court rejects ex-sex slaves' appeal
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 14:10:15 -0800
Seq: 137
December 7, 2000 Japan Times High court rejects ex-sex slaves' appeal Ruling says time for seeking redress over; no finding of fact conducted The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal filed by 46 Filipino women seeking 920 million yen in compensation for having been forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during the war. The court upheld an Oct. 9, 1998, Tokyo District Court ruling that rejected their suit. The plaintiffs said they would appeal the latest decision in the Supreme Court. Presiding Judge Masato Niimura said in Wednesday's ruling: "In light of international law, individuals are not granted the right to demand compensation from the country that did them harm. Also, the period for demanding compensation has already expired." The women claimed the Japanese military confined and forced them to provide sex for its soldiers after Japan occupied the Philippines in 1942, when some of the plaintiffs were only 10 years old. The women argued that Japan is obliged to compensate them because sexual slavery violates a 1907 treaty and international rules that protect civilians in military-occupied territories. Japanese and Philippine laws were also invoked in the suit. The government said international laws stipulate rules to be followed by countries and do not cover individuals demanding compensation. The district court dismissed the case without conducting a finding of fact in the hearings. Eighteen women filed the suit in April 1993, and 28 others joined six months later. Ten of them died before the lower court's ruling, including Maria Rosa Henson, the first Filipino woman to come forward and talk about being a sex slave in a Japanese military brothel. Seven other cases dealing with demands for compensation and apologies from Tokyo have been filed by former "comfort women," as Japan euphemistically referred to them, and are pending before Japanese courts. The latest ruling is the second at the high court level, following a rejection handed down last month against a South Korean woman living in Japan. On Nov. 30, the Tokyo High Court rejected her demands for a government apology and 12 million yen in damages for being treated as a sex slave before and during the war. Up to 200,000 women, mostly from the Korean Peninsula but also from other Japanese-occupied lands, are believed to have been taken to frontline brothels and forced to provide sex for Imperial soldiers. FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Corporate Watch in Japanese is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ------------------------------------- Corporate Watch in Japanese Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) P.O. Box 29344 San Francisco, CA 94129 USA Tel: 1-415-561-6472 Fax: 1-415-561-6493 Email: cwj@corpwatch.org URL: http://www.corpwatch-jp.org ------------------------------------- ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________