Care For WWII "Comfort Women" Urged On Int'l Day

Mei Li, a campaigner for rights of Chinese comfort women, organized a photo exhibition and a lecture in Hong Kong on Wednesday, the international day for elimination of violence against women.

Li said she hoped to arouse people's awareness of the fact that comfort women are victims of sexual assault.

On Friday, she attended the funeral of Zhang Xiantu, a comfort woman who died in north China's Shanxi Province at the age of 89. Zhang was the last living member of a group of Chinese women who sued Japan for an apology and compensation in 1995. In 2009, Japan's top court recognized the crime but rejected their claims.

"Besides years of gynecological diseases and other forms of physical suffering, comfort women bear psychological scars of their humiliating experience that are even harder to confront," said Li.

"Today we are in a peaceful era, and the miserable stories of comfort women will serve as an alert for addressing the issue of women's rights," said Li.

"In no circumstance should sexual harassment, violence or abuse of women be tolerated," she said.

Historians estimate that about 200,000 comfort women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula, China, and other Southeast Asian countries, were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The term 'violence against women' goes beyond domestic violence. It refers to violence in all forms, including physical aggression, mental harm, and sexual assault, said Chen Lifei, professor of the comfort women issue center at Shanghai Normal University.

"One experience of sexual violence can bring huge stigma physically and psychologically, not to mention having to endure the suffering for years," said Chen.

An international coalition of parliamentarians against sexual slavery was officially launched at the UN headquarters on Monday, with founding members from Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Britain and the Republic of Korea.

"The resolution of the Japanese military's comfort women issue will serve as a model for addressing the issue of girls' and women's wartime human rights for future generations," said Canadian Senator Yonah Martin, a co-chair of the coalition. (Cihan/Xinhua)