A national museum on gender equality and human rights issues should be established, human rights groups and the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation said yesterday, which was International Memorial Day for Comfort Women.
Known euphemistically as “comfort women,” hundreds of thousands of girls and women from Asian countries were abducted and forced into sexual slavery prior to and during World War II by the Japanese military, a UN report said.
At the newly relocated Ama Museum in Taipei, foundation chief executive officer Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋) announced the launch of programs and exhibitions documenting the stories of Taiwan’s comfort women, “so people would not forget this often neglected aspect of wartime history.”
Photo: CNA
Taiwan’s efforts to document the issue started in 1992, leading to contributions from 59 women who were willing to talk about their experiences, Tu said.
However, only one of them is still alive, she added.
Tu and other human rights advocates urged the government and the public to raise awareness about sexual abuse and violence against women, and called for a state-funded “national museum on gender equality and human rights issues.”
The government must include the experiences Taiwanese women went through as “military sex slaves” during the war, which is part of the nation’s history, in textbooks, public education, curricula on human rights breaches and sexual violence against women and teaching material at high schools, the group said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) said that Taiwan should follow the lead of the California school board to include comfort women issues in high-school history courses, as the best way to prevent such tragedies is to examine history.
Former DPP legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) said that most comfort women refused financial compensation from the Japanese government.
“These women displayed courage and dignity by refusing the payments, which they did because they wanted an official apology from the Japanese government,” Yu said. “They stood up for their dignity.”
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