Subject: [cwj 144] Japan Court Nixes Sex Slave Funds
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 09:59:27 -0800
Seq: 144
Japan Court Nixes Sex Slave Funds The Associated Press, Thu 29 Mar 2001=20 TOKYO (AP) =97 An appeals court Thursday said the Japanese government need not pay three Korean women compensation for forcing them into wartime sexual slavery as no serious constitutional violations occurred.=20 The Hiroshima High Court overturned a 1998 district court ruling that ordered the government to pay a total of $7,260 to the women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.=20 The three women and seven people forced into slave labor filed a lawsuit with the Yamaguchi District Court in western Japan in 1992, seeking about $3.1 million in official compensation. They also demanded the government's official apology. One of the women has since died.=20 The plaintiffs appealed the ruling, saying the amount of compensation was too small. The government also appealed, refusing to pay compensation.=20 The two women said they were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers in Taiwan and the Chinese city of Shanghai.=20 In the original 1998 ruling, the Shimonoseki Branch of the Yamaguchi District Court said the Japanese government has failed to enact laws to accommodate the payment of compensation to sex slaves.=20 The women and their supporters hailed the ruling as a landmark decision.=20 On Thursday, however, presiding judge Toshiaki Kawanami said abducting the women to use them as forced laborers and sex slaves was not a serious constitutional violation.=20 Tokyo has acknowledged that its wartime army set up brothels and forced thousands of Koreans into military service, but it has refused to pay direct, or official compensation to individuals.=20 Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly Koreans but also Filipinos, Chinese and Dutch, were forced into sexual slavery during World War II.=20 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 ______________________