Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Nettle, I move:

That the Senate:

(a)

notes that:

(i)

the term ‘comfort women’ refers to an estimated 200 000 women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Government during World War II,

(ii)

the enslavement of comfort women was officially commissioned and orchestrated by the Government of Japan to include gang rape, forced abortions, sexual violence, human trafficking and numerous other crimes against humanity,

(iii)

for the past 16 years, since 1992, survivors in Korea have been holding weekly ‘Wednesday demonstrations’, and

(iv)

on 7 March 2007 the ‘Friends of Comfort Women’ in Australia will hold a similar Wednesday demonstration at midday outside the Japanese Consulate in Sydney; and

(b)

calls on the Government to:

(i)

demand an official and unequivocal apology from the Japanese Government for its sexual enslavement of comfort women during the duration of World War II,

(ii)

urge the Japanese Government to establish a system of payment and reparations to the comfort women, and

(iii)

urge the Japanese Government to accurately teach the history of comfort women in Japanese schools.

Question put.