Tue, Feb 27, 2001 page3

• Women were `legally sold,' Shi says

  ADDING INSULT TO INJURY Presidential advisor Shi Wen-lung kicked up another dust storm with remarks that the comfort women were not forced into prostitution

  • By Lin Mei-chun / STAFF REPORTER
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  Presidential advisor and head of Taiwan's Chi Mei Group (奇美電子) Shi Wen-lung (許文龍) issued a statement yesterday in an attempt to silence the firestorm of criticism over comments he made Sunday that Taiwan's comfort women were not forced into prostitution, but that they "were sold through legal business transactions."

  The statement, which only seems to have added to the furor, explains that modern people, unable to fully understand the life of people in Taiwan in the early part of last century, lack a sufficient understanding of historic events, including that involving Taiwan's comfort women, and cannot judge whether they were forced into prostitution or not.

  "Modern people are clueless about the historic background of that era [during World War II], neither do [people today] understand the thoughts and concepts of the Taiwanese who were once governed by the Japanese. These factors all triggered a gap of historic interpretation between Taiwan's older and younger generations," Shi said in the statement.

  The business tycoon provided the explanation to the Chairman of the Central Daily News Shaw Yu-ming (邵玉銘), who invited Shi to attend a seminar held by the newspaper entitled "To restore the historic reality of comfort women."

  Shi failed to appear at the meeting in person, and offered the statement instead.

  In the statement, Shi said he thought highly of the longstanding endeavor made by women's groups to fight for the rights of comfort women.

  Shi also said, however, that Taiwanese should spend more time and energy solving existing problems -- such as issues concerning child prostitutes as well as Aboriginals who have succumbed to poverty and become prostitutes.

  "These are the matters deserving immediate attention from the authorities and public. [We] should not repeatedly aim blame at the Japanese, who obtained comfort women during World War II through lawful avenues," said the statement.

  It went on, "Comfort women were part and parcel of the socio-political reality some 60 years ago. It is not possible for contemporaries to completely understand the truth of Taiwanese life at the time, which was characterized by extreme poverty. It is consequently unbelievable for modern people to hear the saying that comfort women were not forced."

  But Shi said, in accordance with what he had heard and saw during Taiwan's colonization by Japan, that comfort women were indeed not coerced.

  "They became comfort women because their parents sold their daughters to labor brokers so as to cope with their destitution," the statement said.

  Shi triggered another wave of fierce protest over the On Taiwan (台灣論) comic from opposition lawmakers and women's groups, who insisted he resign from his post as a presidential advisor, after he said on Sunday that the Japanese military did not force Taiwanese girls to become comfort women, and that it was their own parents who forced them into it.

  In the cartoon, the author Yoshinori Kobayashi quotes Shi as saying that many comfort women -- used to entertain Japanese troops -- had been willing to accept their role.

  There have also been calls from the opposition, asking the Government Information Office (GIO) to ban the book.

  In response, the director of the GIO Su Tzen-ping (蘇正平) said there was no legal basis to ban any book as the Publishing Law was abolished a while ago.

  For your information

  History of 'On Taiwan'

  * The comic 'On Taiwan,' by Japanese author Yoshinori Kobayashi was published in Japan in November. * 'On Taiwan' sold 250,000 copies in Japan between it's date of publication and the end of December. * The book was launched in Taiwan in early February. * A passage of the book claims that Taiwan's comfort women, women widely believed to have been forced into sexual slavery, actually acted under their own free will. * The Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation attacked Kobayashi's "twisted" presentation of the comfort women issue in a press conference on Feb. 21.
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