Fund to help fight comfort women's case
A new fund is being set up in the United States to help 'comfort women' - the former sex slaves of Japanese soldiers during World War II.
An organiser of the fund - the Chinese Council for Victims of Military Sexual Slavery - has called on victims in China to get in touch to claim help.
Sulia Chan, also president of the New York-Based Chinese Alliance for Memorial and Justice, said the fund was aimed at providing monthly living assistance to the elderly victims and help with medical costs.
Ms Chan said the former women also needed legal advice to help seek apologies and reparation from Japan.
'They should know that they have the right to demand justice and compensation,' she said.
The fund, to be raised in the United States from July, will start by helping the 15 victims in China who have asked her group to take legal action against Japan.
The effort to assist the elderly war victims in China has been given a boost with the Chinese Government asking Japan to take responsibility for resolving the issue of sex slaves.
The official appeal was delivered by Zhang Yishan , alternate representative of China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva, during a human rights conference in Switzerland late last month.
Ms Chan said it was encouraging that China joined in the international condemnation over violence against women and spoke out for the comfort women.
Noting that the China was cautious about local connections with foreign groups, Ms Chan said they would be careful in their dealings in the country.
She stressed that they were not troublemakers and had no other intention behind their work. 'We just want to help the old ladies. No turmoil can be stirred up by these war victims.' But some local authorities in China have been unhelpful, according to a Beijing-based war reparation campaigner.
Tong Zeng said the authorities in Shanxi province were yet to issue passports to two former comfort women to give evidence in person at hearings in two district courts in Japan.
He said that if the witnesses could not attend the hearings in July, their demands for apologies and compensation would be undermined.
Historians believe that as up to 200,000 women from China, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and the Netherlands were comfort women.
Comfort women in Hong Kong can apply through the Hong Kong Reparation Association headed by veteran campaigner Ng Yat-hing, Ms Chan said.
