Demand that the UN repeal the “Coomaraswamy Report”

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Nonfulfillment of “Japan and South Korea Agreement” by South Korea
The content of the “Coomaraswamy Report” which is full of deception
Remark of Professor Park Yu-ha

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Nonfulfillment of “Japan and South Korea Agreement” by South Korea

When Japan and South Korean reached a bilateral agreement two years ago that the comfort women issue would be “resolved finally and irreversibly,” I was glad that Japan could finally put an end to this long overdue problem.  However, my expectation was quickly disappointed by that country’s relentless Japan-bashing.   The Japanese Government paid one billion yen to the “Reconciliation and Healing Foundation” set up by the South Korean Government.  Even though the Japanese government fulfilled its agreement quickly, the Government of South Korea hasn’t fulfilled their side of the agreement.  What is more, the comfort women issue in the country is getting worse.  Not only has the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy been removed as agreed upon, but also a new statue was set up in front of the Japanese Consulate in Pusan.  Moon Jae-in has recently announced that an official day of commemoration for the comfort women is designated starting next year.  The Moon administration has also announced plans to open a research center dedicated to the victims in 2019 and a history museum in 2020.

The Coomaraswamy Report which gave the world a stamp of approval that “comfort women were sex slaves”

What made this issue deteriorate so badly?  The false report by the Asahi Newspaper can be blamed as one cause of deterioration.  So can the Kono Statement.  However, what should be blamed the most is the Coomaraswamy Report (E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.l) of 1996 by a UN Special Rapporteur, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy.  The report gave the world a stamp of approval that the comfort women were sex slaves.  The Asahi Newspaper admitted that they falsely reported regarding the number of comfort women and quoted from a fictitious book not based on the fact.  As for the Kono Statement, the detailed investigation by the Japanese Government revealed that the two governments made their efforts in adjusting the differences of wording during the process of drafting the statement.  In other words, the statement was drafted not because the Japanese military was to be blamed for the comfort women but the Japanese administration at the time of statement wanted to appease the people and government of South Korea.  Thus, out of the three incidents that made the comfort women issue deteriorate, the only thing that hasn’t yet been challenged is the Coomaraswamy Report.  I would like to verify the contents and the process of the report so that we might be able to demand that the UN repeal the report.

Leftists NGOs that are very active in the UN

It has gradually become widely known that the UN has been a den of leftists for many years.  “Radical feminism,” “abortion,” “homosexuality,” “extreme sex education”:  these are some of the leftists’ agenda which they have been promoting in the UN in order to destroy the traditional family.  The reason that they can be successful in promoting these agenda is because out of 3000 NGOs which have consultative status in the UN, only fewer than 20 are trying to protect families.  Further, these NGOs with consultative status have authority to participate in many of the UN meetings and through active participation they are influencing the purpose, policy, and programs of the UN.  Ms. Sharon Slater, President of Family Watch International, explains in her book titled “Stand for the Family” how these leftists NGOs incorporate their ideology into the UN agenda with different tactics.  In a way, the UN is controlled by those NGOs with consultative status.  

The same is true with the “comfort women issue.”   Many Japanese leftists NGOs have consultative status in the UN and they are trying hard to keep the comfort women issue alive in the UN, while there are hardly any NGOs which try to tackle the issue fairly and squarely in the UN.  These leftists NGOs have been frequenting the UN for the past 30 years and it is a well-known fact that a Japanese lawyer named Totsuka Etsuro first promoted the idea that “comfort women were sex slaves.”  I myself have often witnessed that those leftists in the UN were talking to the Human Rights Committee members in a friendly manner.  It is easy to surmise that those leftists have a long and friendly relationship with committee members.  They were the ones who made it possible for the UN to send a Special Rapporteur to Japan to investigate the comfort women issue.

The content of the “Coomaraswamy Report” which is full of deception

In other words, even before the Special Rapporteur was sent to Japan, it has already been agreed upon that the comfort women were sex slaves.  Sending the Special rapporteur was nothing but formality to give the world a stamp of approval to this agreement.  This is clear even from the Coomaraswamy Report itself.   Article 6 of the report states, “The Special Rapporteur would like to clarify at the outset of this report that she considers the case of women forced to render sexual services in wartime by and/or for the use of armed forces as practice of military sexual slavery.”  Yet, she did not show any evidence to support this claim. 

Article 8 of the report also states, “The Special Rapporteur holds the opinion that the practice of comfort women should be considered a clear case of sexual slavery and a slave-like practice in accordance with the approach adopted by relevant international human rights bodies and mechanisms.”  Considering that those international human rights bodies and mechanisms were created after World War II, this view is nothing but imposing the present time view on the issue of the comfort women without any consideration of historical background nor customs at that time.

In article 10, she says, “Finally, for the purpose of terminology, the Special Rapporteur concurs entirely with the view held by……representatives of non-governmental organizations and some academics that the comfort women does not in the least reflect the suffering, such as multiple rapes on an everyday basis and severe physical abuse, that women victims had to endure during their forced prostitution ….. The Special Rapporteur, therefore, considers with conviction that the phrase military sexual slaves represents a much more accurate and appropriate terminology.”  As this article indicates, she simply took the opinion of some NGOs and academics at face value without verification.  The following are some of other problems in the report.

First, the report is not based on the fact.  In article 8 of the preliminary report submitted on Nov of 1994, Ms. Coomaraswamy points out two components in fulfilling her duty as the special rapporteur.  As its second component, she states, “The second component consists of identifying and investigating factual situations, as well as allegations which may be forwarded to the Special Rapporteur by concerned parties.”  Yet, the biggest problem of the report is that she took allegations of NGOs at face value without investigating historical facts.  Even though she herself states that she understands her duty as a special rapporteur requires her to investigate factual situations but she did not fulfill her duty at all.

Next, the following are what the report describes regarding the way of recruitment and the living conditions of the comfort women.   “Recruitment involved use of deception and force (article 14)” “Many were killed by the retreating Japanese troops, or simply abandoned to their fate.  In Micronesia, in one case the Japanese army killed 70 comfort women in one night because they felt the women would be an embarrassment… (article 21)”  “Many women victims…… were forced to take part in military operations, including suicide missions with the soldiers.  (article 22)”  “….large-scale coercion and violent abduction of women in what amounts to slave aids in countries under Japanese control.  (article 27)”  “In cases where even more women were needed, the Japanese military resorted to violence….. involved the slaughter of family members who tried to prevent the abduction of their daughter.  (article 29)”  “The girls seized from villages appear to have been young, majority between the ages of 14 and 18…..(article 30)”  “…..the conditions under which they were expected to serve soldiers were almost invariably appalling. (article 32)”  “…a majority of comfort women seem to have at some point contracted a venereal disease. (article 38)”  “….comfort women were expected to serve as many as 60 to 70 men per day. (article 34)”  “…only very few saw any earnings at the end of the war.  (article 36)”

However, the sources of these claims are not based upon historical material.  They were based on the books written by Seiji Yoshida and George Hicks, an Australian.  It is a well-know fact that the book called “My War Crime” by Yoshida is fiction.  Considering the fact that Hicks’ book was also written quoting from Yoshida’s book, neither book have historical value.  They were simply made-up stories.  So are the claims in the report.

Ms. Coomaraswamy states that she interviewed 16 former comfort women and concludes that their stories are factual since they all tell a similar story.  One of them is Chong Ok Sun from North Korea.  In her interview, she states, “One day…I went to the village well to fetch water.  A Japanese garrison soldiers took me away, so that my parents never knew what happened to their daughter….. (At a garrison) One Korean girl who was with us once demanded why we had to serve so many….. To punish her, they took off her clothes, tied her legs and hands and rolled her over a board with nails until the nails were covered with blood… In the end, they cut off her head.  (article 54)”  She took this story at face value without verification.  It seems that she simply pretended to investigate while she had already concluded even before her investigation that the comfort women were sex slaves.  

 

The report also estimates the number of comfort women being 200,000.  This was the number she was told by North Korea.  Further, she confused the Women’s Voluntary Service Corps with comfort women.  Her confusion is clear as indicated in article 15, which states, “With the strengthening of the National General Mobilization Law by the Japanese Government, which had been passed in 1932 but which had not been fully implemented until the last few years of the war….  In this connection, the Women’s Voluntary Service Corps was established… however, many women were deceived into serving as military sexual slaves and the association of the Service Corps with prostitution soon became well known.”  In short, the number 200,000 is based on the claim by North Korea as well as the confusion of the Women’s Voluntary Service Corps with the comfort women.

Suppose that there were 200,000 comfort women and they were forced to have sex with 50 men a day, as the report indicates.  Simple calculation indicates that there were 10 million acts of sexual intercourse a day.  It is hard to assume that all the Japanese soldiers used a comfort station every day, even if half of them used the station, the total number of the Japanese soldiers adds up to 20 million.  If Japan had so many soldiers, we could have easily won the war!!  Even if every soldier frequented the comfort station without fighting, there is no way this number was possible unless every soldier frequented a comfort station so many times a day.  Such a claim was a mere insult toward the Japanese soldiers who were fighting so hard for their country!!!

 

Her claim that the majority of women did not have any earnings is far from the truth.  The United States Office of War Information dated Oct, 1944, after interviewing 20 comfort women, states that “in an average month a girl would gross about fifteen hundred yen.”  According to Mr. Tsutomu Nishioka, one of the comfort women he interviewed had a remaining saving of 26,145 yen at the end of the war.  This amount of money at that time was worth the cost of five houses in Tokyo.

There are some sections in the report, which describe fair treatment of comfort women by the Japanese military; however, even such fair treatment was twisted by Ms. Coomaraswamy’s biased view.  Article 20 of the report states, “…Much attention seems to have been paid to see that the comfort women were treated correctly.  The prohibition of alcohol and swords, the regulation of hours of service, reasonable payment and other attempts to impose what would appear to be a sense of decorum or fair treatment are in stark contrast with the brutality and cruelty of the practice.  This only serves to highlight the extraordinary inhumanity of a system of military sexual slavery….”  She indicates that the fair treatment of the comfort women serves to highlight the extraordinary inhumanity.  Her biased view to consider fair treatment as inhumanity is a clear indication that her biased view itself is inhumane! 

As stated above, reading the report with common sense one can easily tell that the content of the report is far from truth and simply deception.  One doesn’t need to have a detailed knowledge of the comfort women issue to know her deceitfulness.  However, the voice of common sense is completely ignored by the fact that the report was written by a UN Special Rapporteur.  What can we do?  Let’s demand that the UN repeal the deceitful Coomaraswamy Report.

Remark of Professor Park Yu-ha

he Coomaraswamy Report was published in 1996.   The Asahi Newspaper later admitted its false reporting, the Kono Statement was reviewed, and the document by the US Army regarding the comfort women was found.  Based on these new findings after the publication of the report, it may be possible to request the UN to repeal the report.  Further, there is a welcoming voice coming out of South Korea which doubts, based on the historical materials and testimonies of former comfort women, that the comfort women were sex slaves and suggests that the relationship between Japanese soldiers and comfort women was more complicated.  “Comfort Women of the Empire” by Professor Park Yu-ha is one of such voices.  

During an interview by the New York Times on April of 2016, Professor Park stated:  The anti-Japanese activist group “Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery (Korean Council)” was formed by the South Korean Communists.  Its leader said publicly it was determined to defame Japan for the next 200 years.  Its propaganda turned me off, so I stayed away from this issue for many years.  I regained my interest in this issue in the early 2000s when I heard that the Korean Council was confining surviving women in a nursing home called House of Nanumu.  The only time these women were allowed to talk to outsiders was when the Korean Council needed them to testify for the UN Special Rapporteur or to U.S. politicians.  But for some reason I was allowed to talk to them one day in 2003.  I could sense the women were not happy being confined in this place.  One of them (Bae Chun-hee) told me she reminisced about the romance she had with a Japanese soldier.  She said that she hated her father who sold her.  She also told me that women there didn’t appreciate being watched by the Korean Council to give false testimonies but had to obey the order of the Korean Council…… Some of its members were arrested as North Korean spies.  The Korean Council has used the comfort women issue for its political purposes, which is to drive a wedge into the US-Japan-South Korea security partnership.

ven though it is a well-known fact to many Japanese scholars, I am very grateful that a scholar from South Korea speaks up that the testimonies in the Coomaraswamy Report were falsified and North Korea is behind this issue.

Repeal the Coomaraswamy Report!

etween September 11th and 29th 2017, the 36th Session of the UN Human Rights Council was held in Geneva.  In order to attend this session, a team to spread the truth about the comfort women was organized.  The team sent a paper to the council and gave a speech during the meeting requesting the UN to repeal the “Coomaraswamy Report.”  One of the team members Mr. Shunichi Fujiki, a foreign affairs analyst, first went to Geneva three years ago to observe the dialogue between the Human Rights Committee and the Japanese Government.  Since then he has gone to Geneva 16 times.  Mr. Fujiki explained the purpose of his activities in the UN in two points.  One of them is to spread the true version of history to the world to correct the falsified history which had been spread by the leftists for so long.  The second is to let the leftists know that the UN is no longer an unrivaled place for them to do whatever they want to do so that they cannot spread any more falsified information in the UN.

By frequenting the UN, Mr. Fujiki has also established a network in the UN.  One of people he acquainted in the UN is Mr. Bilal Balouch, an employee of Bolan Times, who is familiar with UN affairs.  He said that “giving a speech at the Human Rights Council once or twice may not be able to change anything, but repeating the same thing over and over, people start listening to you.”  It is not easy to repeal all the falsified history the leftists have spread in the UN.  However, we cannot just look on the situation where the country of Japan is defamed and its history is rewritten.  We need to start doing something albeit a small step at a time so that we can protect the interests of Japan.

Lastly, I would like to make a request to readers.  Any certified NPO corporation or general incorporated can apply for consultative status in the UN.  Only after being granted this status, can NGOs have a voice in the UN.  Presently, conservative NGOs with consultative status are outnumbered by the leftists NGOs.  I would like many of you to apply for this status and become a part of the conservative movement in the UN.