Marking 60 years since the end of World War II and following the release last week of Silent Scars, a book dealing with the Japanese military's history of sexual slavery during the war, an exhibition of images entitled "The Resilience of Life: Sixty Years of Taiwanese Comfort Woman Survivors" opened in Taipei yesterday.
The exhibition will run until Aug. 31 in the pedestrian zones of Taipei Warner Village and in Ximending.
According to the organizers -- the Taiwan Women's Rescue Foundation and the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs -- the goal of the exhibition is to remind people of the suffering of "comfort women" and demonstrate their spirit.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"We don't act out of anti-Japan sentiment when we hold these activities and exhibitions. However, it's all about human rights and forcing women to serve as sex slaves for troops is definitely a war crime and a violation of human rights," said Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday at the exhibition's launch.
"In 1968, the UN's Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity had already considered that war crimes and crimes against humanity are among the gravest infringements of international law. They also recognized that no expiry period should apply for lawsuits, irrespective of the date of their commission," Ma said, quoting the UN charter. He said that people should never give up trying to redress grievances.
The number of comfort women still alive to tell their story is rapidly dwindling. According to the Taiwan Women's Rescue Foundation, there are now only 30 surviving Taiwanese comfort women.
In an explanatory note accompanying the images in the exhibition, one former comfort woman recalled that she and a handful of other women were tricked into doing laundry, housekeeping and nursing chores at first, but were then forced into prostitution. Another said that they had no idea about the reality of their prison home, but they knew it was "a place for accommodating women" and only Japanese imperial troops had access to the women's quarters. Civilians were prohibited from entering.
"War is in fact a behavior stemming from patriarchy. We can easily find many examples of women being suppressed during the war. Those who suffered after the atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki received lots of attention, whereas these women with excruciating memories of sex slavery still struggle for justice," said Liao Hsien-hao (廖咸浩), head of the Taipei City Government's Department of Cultural Affairs.
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