The Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery was a
tribunal organised by Violence Against Women in War-Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan).
Its purpose was to gather testimony from victims, and then to try groups and individuals for rape or
sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This include ...
, i.e., forcing women to sexually service Japanese soldiers.
The group met on December 8, 2000, and was adjourned on December 12, 2000.
On December 4, 2001, the group's final statement was issued in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
. More than 1000 paragraphs and 200 pages long, the judgment discussed the factual findings of the Tribunal, and law applicable to the case. Not all of the accused were convicted, but the late Emperor Showa was, because, as the leader of the country, he was ultimately responsible for the sex-slave policy.
The two last paragraphs of the final judgement read as follows:
The Crimes committed against these survivors remain one of the greatest unacknowledged and unremedied injustices of the Second World War. There are no museums, no graves for the unknown "comfort woman", no education of future generations, and there have been no judgement days for the victims of Japan's military sexual slavery and the rampant sexual violence and brutality that characterized its aggressive war.
Accordingly, through this Judgment, this Tribunal intends to honor all the women victimized by Japan's military sexual slavery system. The Judges recognize the great fortitude and dignity of the survivors who have toiled to survive and reconstruct their shattered lives and who have faced down fear and shame to tell their stories to the world and testify before us. Many of the women who have come forward to fight for justice have died unsung heroes. While the names inscribed in history's page have been, at best, those of the men who commit the crimes or who prosecute them, rather than the women who suffer them, this Judgement bears the names of the survivors who took the stand to tell their stories, and thereby, for four days at least, put wrong on the scaffold and truth on the throne.
The tribunal was broadcast by
NHK
, also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestri ...
as part of a documentary on Japan's wartime sexual slavery.
See also
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Comfort women
Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese '' ia ...
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Japanese war crimes
The Empire of Japan committed war crimes in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese militarism, Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have b ...
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World Courts of Women
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Japanese Devils
''Japanese Devils'' (or ''Riben Guizi'' ) is a Japanese documentary about the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1931 and 1945. The documentary is a series of interviews with 14 Japanese veterans of the Second Sino-Japan ...
Japanese documentary on Imperial Japanese atrocities.
*
Saburo Ienaga, a Japanese historian who fought government censorship of Imperial Japanese atrocities in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
after the war.
References
{{Reflist
Comfort women
2000 in Japan