Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday said that his government would not revise a landmark 1993 “comfort women” apology and said he was “deeply pained” by the suffering of women drawn into a system of wartime brothels.
Abe, who has made similar remarks in the past, has faced criticism for his government’s alleged plan to review what is known as the Kono Statement, which acknowledged official complicity in the coercion of military sex slaves, a historical legacy that draws raw resentment in neighboring South Korea.
Respected historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, but also from Taiwan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines, were forced to serve Japanese soldiers. They are sometimes called “comfort women.”
Photo: AFP
Abe said yesterday that his Cabinet “upholds the position on the recognition of history outlined by the previous administrations in its entirety,” including the Kono Statement.
“With regard to the comfort women issue, I am deeply pained to think of the comfort women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering, a feeling I share equally with my predecessors,” he told a parliamentary committee, according to a statement issued by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The Kono Statement addresses this issue... As my Chief Cabinet Secretary [Yoshihide] Suga stated in press conferences, the Abe Cabinet has no intention to review it,” he said.
Suga, the government’s top spokesman, said on Monday that there was no plan to revise the statement, adding that Tokyo’s review was aimed at verifying historical facts and to determine if South Korea was involved in drafting its text.
Neither Suga’s comments, nor the latest remarks from Abe, clarified what would happen if Tokyo’s review was at odds with the official apology.
In 1993, after hearing testimony from 16 South Korean women, Japan offered “sincere apologies and remorse” to the women, and vowed to face the historical facts squarely.
However, repeated wavering on the issue among senior right-wing politicians has contributed to a feeling in South Korea that Japan is in denial and is not sufficiently remorseful.
Some Japanese conservatives have responded that Tokyo has repeatedly apologized and that the issue was being used for political gain.
“As I have stated earlier, we must be humble in front of history,” Abe also said yesterday.
However, he added that “history should not be politicized or be turned into a diplomatic issue. Research on history should be entrusted to experts and historians.”
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,