Justice for Comfort Women

Justice for Comfort Women

Started
January 20, 2020
Signatures: 5,294Next Goal: 7,500
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Why this petition matters

Started by JusticeForComfortWomen

Trigger warning: mentions of sexual abuse.

"“I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. The war never ended for the ‘Comfort Women’.”

-Jan Ruff-O’Herne

First, the although the word "comfort woman" is used by most of the victims themselves, it has a wrong meaning. The women did not want to give comfort to those men, and the correct word would be "Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military". However, because most people know this case by the name of "comfort women," I will keep on using this word in this petition.

What are "Comfort Women"? They are females dragged or deceived or forced into comfort camps, where they were raped. They were about 200,000 of them. (According to <Comfort Women>, Yoshimi Yoshiaki) They were beaten and raped in a room almost everyday. They were children (youngest 14, oldest in their twenties) Some of them testimonied that after their "job" ended at the end of the day, they could barely walk.

Those women mostly consisted of Koreans, Chinese, and Philippines, but there were so much more.

There were only about a handful survivors. Although some survivors chose to speak out, they have never gotten an apology they wanted. And when they stated that Japan had to apologize to all the other women from different countries, the government reasserted that it had no legal responsibility to pay compensation to the victims of its crimes.

Former Prime Minister of Japan (Abe) stated that they have went to the military camps in their own will, and points out that they have been paid. But the survivor's testimonies go against the fact and many states they were forced into those camps. 

Now, events of the World War II are the past, and the young girls have aged. So many of them have passed away without ever getting a single apology that satisfied their demands.

Some people state that they do not have any responsibility for their ancestor's actions. They're not the ones that did such a thing, after all.

This sort of matter has been argued about for decades. Someone offers a solution on whether the people of a country should apologize for their ancestor's crimes.

Alasdair MacIntyre states in his book, After Virtue: "We all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone's son or daughter, someone's cousin or uncle; I am a citizen of this or that city...as such, I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritancea, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is a part what gives my own life its moral particularity...I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships."

 <Justice: What is the Right Thing to Do?> , by the Harvard professor Michael Sandel, says, "Collectice apologies and reparations for historic injustices are good examples of the way solidarity can create moral responsibilities for communities other than my own. Making amends for my country's past wrongs is one way of affirming my allegiance to it."

If we hold pride in what our ancestors did right, we should also hold grief in what our ancestors did wrong. Running away from it and denying it will only worsen the relationship between Japan and Korea.

Please sign this petition to get a well deserved apology for these women. Because this is more than giving a little apology to some women who were raped. This goes against human rights, and women's rights, and humanity in general. 

If you support this case, please sign this petition.

“I wanted to protest to the Japanese people, ‘You say nothing like that happened, but I survived all that and am living evidence that it did."

-Kim Hak-Sun, the first comfort woman to testimony about her experiences.

~

한국분들을 위해:

많은 한국분들은 위안부 할머니들에 대해 아실것입니다. 이것은 할머니들이 하루빨리 사과를 받으실 수 있도록 아베에게 사과를 요청하는 서명 운동입니다. 

처음에는 저도 위안부 할머니들에 대해 알았지만, 제가 할 수 있는 것이 없다고 생각했습니다. 하지만 모두 위안부 할머니들이 사과를 받을 수 있도록 노력할 수 있고, 저는 도움이 되고 싶은 마음으로 이 서명 운동을 만들었습니다.

이 운동이 크게 되지 안을거라는 것을 알고있습니다. 하지만 이 운동이 더 많은 사람들에게 위안부 할머니들에 대해 알린다면 저는 만족할 것 같습니다. 

우리나라와 세계에 있는 모든 위안부 분들이 사과를 받으실 수 있도록 기도하고 노력할 것입니다. 우리나라의 군인들이 베트남에서 여자들을 성폭행한것도 우리가 사과해야하고요. 

참여해주셔서 고맙습니다.

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Signatures: 5,294Next Goal: 7,500
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