European Parliament passes resolution on comfort women

Posted on : 2007-12-14 10:49 KST Modified on : 2007-12-14 10:49 KST

The European Parliament adopted on Thursday a resolution demanding that Japan apologize to and compensate women it mobilized as sex slaves before and during World War II.

The resolution passed with 54 ayes out of 57 members present, marking the fourth time that foreign countries have held Japan accountable for the "comfort women" and pressed for an official apology. A similar resolution passed the U.S. House in July, and the Netherlands and Canadian lower houses last month.

Comfort women is a euphemism for hundreds of thousands of young girls, many of them kidnapped or lured by the Japanese, placed in frontline brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. The majority of the victims were Koreans, whose nation was under Japanese colonial rule before its liberation at the end of World War II.

Tokyo's leaders have expressed "regrets" to the now-aged victims, but the women as well as other governments denounce Japan for what they see as an evasion of a formal acknowledgement of wrongdoing. The issue is compounded by other history issues, such as Japan's whitewashing or denials of its colonial atrocities in its school textbooks.

The European resolution calls on Tokyo to accept historical and legal responsibility, in an unequivocal manner, for the coercion of young women into sexual slavery and to eliminate barriers restricting compensation for the victims.

STRASBOURG, France, Dec. 13 (Yonhap)

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