IVORY COAST, Where Rape is a Sex Thing and NOT A CRIME

Rapes of women and girls are common in western Côte d’Ivoire and generally go unpunished, said residents of the region.

“These days nearly every time we hear of armed robberies in homes, on the roads or on plantations, we hear of rape,” said a resident of the western town of Duékoué some 500km from the commercial capital Abidjan, who wanted to remain anonymous.

“We hear of two, three, four rapes every day.”

With the proliferation of arms since conflict broke in 2002, unprecedented violent crime continues to plague many areas of Côte d’Ivoire where a March 2007 peace deal marked a formal end to fighting.

In some parts of the north, attacks by Kalashnikov-wielding men – nearly unheard of before the conflict – are frequent, residents say.

Monika Bakayoko-Topolska, gender-based violence coordinator with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Côte d’Ivoire, said: “We certainly are seeing increased reports of rape over the past year and a half or so.” She called rape “one of the biggest problems in the west,” adding that sexual violence is a problem throughout the country.

Bakayoko-Topolska said it is not clear whether rape cases have risen sharply in the west or whether more people are reporting the crime after an expansion of education campaigns in the region.

She and some residents of western Côte d’Ivoire said that perpetrators of rape are rarely prosecuted.

Impunity

“Rapes are encouraged,” the woman in Duékoué said. “Because there is no punishment.” Residents of Duékoué and the nearby city of Man said that in some cases authorities harassed or ignored women who reported rape, and that even if pursued, alleged attackers are generally released after a brief detention.

Bakayoko-Topolska said pressure from families of both the victim and perpetrator to settle a case outside the formal justice system is one of many factors commonly discouraging women from filing legal complaints.

“It’s still very rare here that someone gets put in jail for rape,” she said. “Community leaders should accept that because rape and physical violence are prohibited by national law, these crimes should be reported to the police rather than informally dealt with in the village.”

The Duékoué woman told IRIN many women are afraid to go after their attackers because they do not feel supported by law enforcement authorities. “It is not safe here [in Duékoué],” she said. “People are constantly victims of violent crime and assailants operate with utter impunity.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his latest report on Côte d’Ivoire, dated 13 October, expressed concern about authorities’ failure to go after criminals. “The low level of prosecution [for violent crimes] has heightened the pervading sense of impunity in the country.”

Residents of Duékoué and Man said one response has been the creation of neighbourhood vigilante groups. But one resident said a recent rape was perpetrated by a youth who belonged to a self-defence group.

Post-conflict

Many western towns hit by violent crime are in the former buffer zone between the government security forces in the south and rebels in the north, which has been vacated by international forces over the past year after the 2007 peace deal.

UN Secretary-General Ban said in the 13 October report: “The insecurity in the western and northern parts of the country, as well as in parts of the former [buffer] zone of confidence, remains of great concern and has impacted negatively on the full enjoyment of human rights.”

He added: “Increasing indiscriminate attacks by unidentified highway robbers, coupled with violence and rape of women, pose a daily threat to the right to life, to physical integrity and to the safety and security of persons and goods.”

The report said the situation is most serious along the 35-km Duékoué-Bangolo road in the west.

"A sex thing"

The Duékoué woman said that the closest court women there can turn to in rape cases is about 100km away in Daloa and this puts many families off. She said local social workers have told the UN and international NGOs the town needs a local tribunal.

IRC has recommended the Ivorian government establish family support units within national police forces similar to those in Sierra Leone, which is emerging from an 11-year civil war. The units comprise police officers and social workers trained to handle sexual violence cases.

“What is needed most in Côte d’Ivoire is a change in attitudes and practices related to all types of violence against women and girls,” Said Bakayoko-Topolska, “men and women alike can begin this by condemning violence and by showing solidarity with survivors in demanding justice.”

The Duékoué resident said ramping up the legal means to go after perpetrators might deter some people, but rape will continue. “I think many people here do not see rape as a crime; they see it just as a sex thing.”

Sphere: Related Content

Sexual Abuse Of Children Amidst Afghan Civil War

Abdul Kabir, not his real name, left his home in Afghanistan's southern Urozgan province to work for a relative and attend school in neighbouring Kandahar province. Six months later, the 12-year-old found himself in a juvenile prison after being sexually abused.
"After my relative declined to give me a job at his shop, I went to a labour market where two men hired me for construction work for 50 Afghani (US $1) a day. They took me into an empty house where they both forcefully had sex with me," Abdul said, recalling in vivid detail his confinement for three months before managing to get away.
But Abdul's nightmare didn't end there. A driver who promised to take him back to Urozgan for free also abused him, he said. Eventually, Abdul Kabir was able to find his way back to the poppy field he once worked in as a day labourer.
There, Abdul Kabir said another young man, also working in the poppy field, tried to rape him. "But I stabbed him in the stomach," Abdul Kabir said - a move that prompted locals to turn him over to the police.

Unknown victims
According to Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), there are currently 14 child sex abuse cases in Kandahar province alone, five of which have been referred to the police for investigation.
However, specialists say this is just the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of cases going unreported.
"No doubt there are numerous other cases which, due to a variety of social restrictions, go unreported," Shamsuddin Tanwir, AIHRC's director in Kandahar, said.
Only 29 percent of child sexual abuse cases are actually registered, a joint AIHRC and Save the Children-Sweden report on child sexual abuse revealed.
One 14-year-old boy in western Herat province said he had been raped but did not come forward out of fear the police would put him in jail instead.
A health worker in Kandahar's main hospital said that three to five sexually abused children receive medical treatment every month.
"Although victims can receive treatment for their physical injuries, the psychological scars will be with them for a long period of time," Dr Ghulam Mohammad Sahar said.
And while more than 100 medical staff at two hospitals in Kandahar city, the provincial capital, have been trained to receive and treat children suffering from sexual abuse, clearly more needs to be done.

Lack of penal codes
During the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, illegal sex, including sex with children, brought harsh penalties to the perpetrators, even death.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001, Afghanistan reintroduced its old civil and penal laws - both of which lack, however, a specific article on the sexual exploitation of minors.
Article 427 of Afghanistan's penal code determines "long term" imprisonment for adultery. Those who sexually abuse children are currently jailed and sentenced according to this article, which can bring a jail sentence of six to 10 years.
But according to AIHRC's Tanwir, only 24.3 percent of abusers, according to victims' accounts, are actually incarcerated, prompting the rights group to call upon the government to enact a law on child sexual abuse and exploitation and to vigorously implement it.
That will remain difficult, however, given the stigma and disgrace associated with child sex abuse - preventing many people from even speaking openly about it.
"I wouldn't dare tell my parents what happened to me out of fear that they would kill me," one 15-year-old rape victim in the capital, Kabul, said.
Many Afghan parents consider any discussion about sex with their children as indecent and rude even though many cases of children being sexually abused happen within households, the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) found.
"Forty percent of child abuse victims experience sexual abuse at home, where they should be safe," Noriko Izumi, a children's protection offer for UNICEF in Kabul, said.

Ignorance, insecurity and poverty
UNICEF and some NGOs have been pioneering ways to broaden public awareness of child sexual abuse by training school teachers, disseminating educational audio and video programmes, and establishing and strengthening child protection networks.
"If parents teach their children how to behave with elders outside home and avoid proximity to strangers, to some extent, that would help reduce unwanted incidents," Babrak Zadran, an AIHRC staff member in Kabul, recommended.
Child sexual abuse has multifaceted causes, one being pervasive poverty, experts say.
According to AIHRC, over 46 percent of sexually abused children live in abject poverty, making them particularly vulnerable to various forms of exploitation.
Children who work in hotels, shops and other public places not only face the risk of sexual abuse, they also face physical and mental violence, the country's rights watchdog found.
According to Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan human rights activist and MP, for the past 25 years the majority of the country has suffered perpetual war and violence that has culminated not only in the physical destruction of the country, but has also brought about an obscurantist culture of war with very little respect for human rights.
"Given the political and security situation in the country, particularly in the south, I think the general protection issue concerning children is getting more difficult," UNICEF's Izumi concluded.

Sphere: Related Content

Obscenity From The Indian Context

Every generation must redefine notions of obscenity in the context of their times. Ancient India, under the dominance of Hindu rulers, had no issues with nudity. Or sex. Konarak, Khajuraho, the Kamasutra are clear examples of how open minded we once were as a nation, as a culture.
The gorgeous Sunita Menon may not have been around but, even in those days, long before Ekta Kapoor, the most popular things began with K. And no, no one complained. No one saw them as obscene.
Then came the Muslim invasion. The early guys were fine but, as they settled in, the Mughal rulers got more and more uptight till Aurangzeb, clearly anticipating three centuries ago our home minister R R Patil's ideas, banned music, dance, alcohol and, despite his many wives, made sex into a dirty word, to be proscribed in public and suffered only in the bedroom.
The British, who came in next, were going through their prudish Victorian phase and promptly dittoed this. So obscenity became associated with sex and nudity, in a total reversal of our own traditions which celebrated both.
It may be time in India to re-examine this Semitic view of sex and tried to rediscover its timeless beauty, joy and magic. Instead of harassing artists, writers, film makers who try to take sex out of the closet, India should support them. It would likely reduce violence and hatred throughout society.
It will also hopefully diminish India's obsession with divisive forces like religion, caste, community, sect and revive the romance of the male-female relationship. Crimes against women will come down. For very few things have the seductive power to overcome the vulgarity of violence and the fetish of faith. Sex is luckily one of them.
So what happens to vulgarity? If sex is out, what will the obscenity hunters chase? I can suggest several alternatives. Let's start with what the Prime Minister referred to the other day the vulgarity of ostentation. Creating wealth is fine up to a point but, beyond that, wealth must serve the interests of the community. You cannot have 40 per cent of the people barely able to afford one square meal a day while the families of the ruling elite spend 60 per cent of their waking hours shopping around in swanky malls. For me, that's vulgarity. And, as you can see, this vulgarity of hyper consumerism is hurting India more than anything else. It's dividing us into two. Those who can flaunt the new lifestyle versus those who are barely surviving.
Vulgarity is the way we run our democracy where the corrupt buy and occupy every nodal office. Rajiv Gandhi once said that only 10 per cent of what the State spends on the common man ever reaches him. That was in his time. Today, we would be lucky if 2 per cent reaches the common man. Isn't that vulgarity? The fact that those who are hired or voted into office to reduce poverty actually spend all their time looting the state and collaborating with the rich. Maharashtrians complain that Mumbai has been taken over by outsiders. Not true. Mumbai has been taken over by builders, who (irrespective of where they come from) are a law unto themselves. It is these builders who have stripped ordinary people of their dignity and lured them to sell off their homes and forget their culture by tempting them with easy money. It is they who have created these artificial property prices that none of us can afford.
Vulgarity is forcing second hand booksellers off the streets. Vulgarity is fake encounters. Vulgarity is the all encompassing corruption we live with and often succumb to. Vulgarity is destroying the environment, vandalising our heritage, and outraging senior citizens. Vulgarity is rich, ostentatious weddings and dowries. Vulgarity is the fact that India produces 70 per cent of the world's fake drugs that kill millions. Vulgarity is intolerance, brutality, bloodshed. Vulgarity is raping the soul of Mumbai and trying to make it into a silly, fourth rate version of Shenzhen.
Sex is clean, noble, honest when practising safely. Irrespective of where you get it. In your bedroom. On the internet. In a dance bar. On a painter's canvas. Off the movie screen. Or in some lonely park after sundown. At least it brings two people together and does not tear them apart or destroy their homes, culture, dignity. So why give sex a bad name and allow much worse to flourish?

Sphere: Related Content

Where You Rape A Lady And Go Free - Vegas Sex Industry

Suki Falconberg

Two dozen girls were picked up in a raid on a Las Vegas brothel last month. The customers present were questioned and released. This particular raid, the result of something called Operation Doll House, came after two years of investigation, and it yielded the arrest of about half a dozen exploiters with ties to Asia who had trafficked the girls in.

The first news article on this raid (in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 25, 2007) was entitled "Women Facing Deportation" and made it sound as if the girls were the criminals since they were in the US illegally. The second article (also in the Review-Journal, May 4, 2007) did an about face and said the girls would be eligible for "T" visas (ones available for trafficking victims) and they would receive help locally from the Salvation Army and WestCare, a facility with a newly established trafficking program.

The article mentioned the conditions the girls were found under: dirty mattresses on the floor, separated by sheets strung up; the rooms reeking of cigarettes and feces and urine; gallon containers of lube and hundreds of condoms in the brothel. While the brothel was running, neighbors reported seeing customers vomiting and urinating in the street before going in and they reported huge numbers of used condoms rolling down the street on trash days.

The article also, thankfully, pointed out the campaign of terror and physical and psychological abuse, not the least of which is the daily rape of their bodies, that girls who are trafficked endure.

These articles prompted a number of questions on my part. The biggest one: why were the customers not arrested for the ongoing rape of these girls' bodies? Were the girls put in jail cells right after the raid, further traumatizing their already shocked minds and bodies? If they are indeed the victims of this terrible rape of their bodies, why would anyone even consider putting them in a cell, or 'arresting' them, for even a moment?

Who termed this Operation Doll House? It makes the pathetic situation of these poor girls sound like a dirty joke at a bachelor party - as if a brothel were a place full of live dolls to play with. Another such operation in Las Vegas a number of years ago was called Operation Jade Blade, carrying sad, 'exotic' associations with the knives brothel inmates feel between their legs everyday. Words are important. I would like to know if male police officers named these operations, unaware of the insensitivity of phrasing.

Since the Las Vegas police must see the pathetic conditions that prostitutes live under, why would they use such a sadly callous and sexist title for this operation? The Las Vegas police report that the city has as many underage street prostitutes (most trafficked in by pimps) as bigger cities like Los Angeles and New York. Given this, they must see the misery of these girls. Sold girls are not 'dolls.'

Other questions about the raid: Why did it take two years to release the girls from their sexual slavery? Is not the fact of all those used condoms rolling down the street enough of a clue that something is terribly amiss? Two years while the girls were raped thousands of times.

A local aid worker who helps trafficked victims says she was not aware of anyone being sexually enslaved in the US until she herself began helping victims in 1997. Although I have great admiration for what she does, I do know that I have been aware of sexual slavery since I was quite young. I am not sure there was ever a time that I didn't know that the sale of female bodies is one of the most lucrative businesses on the planet. It is rather hard to miss it. When and where have women and girls not been sold for sex? Why would anyone think it does not happen in this country? Is there a city, a place, a haven, anywhere, in the history of our species, where sexual slavery has not been practiced? I have always been aware that my own safety exists at the expense of those less sexually protected in some terrible equation of unfairness and pain.

How many other brothels full of trafficked girls are operating right now in Las Vegas? It is one of the major sex-for-sale venues in the world. Wherever sex is a massive industry, as it is in this entertainment capital of the world--as it styles itself--there will be exploitation. In recent years, Las Vegas has seen a massive proliferation of Asian massage parlours, and the numerous escort services advertise many girls from both Asia and Eastern Europe. The phenomenon of selling more girls from these areas parallels the rise in trafficking worldwide.

Setting up services for trafficked girls in Las Vegas is very recent - only within the last year have organizations and women's groups actually recognized the problem¡Xthis despite the fact that Las Vegas has been 'Sin City' for decades.

Operation Jade Blade took place in 2000, Operation Doll House this year. Two stings within a period of seven years in a city where sex-for-sale is a commonplace? The Las Vegas yellow pages runs 150 pages of ads under the caption 'Entertainment.' Girls are offered under such headings as 'Barely Legal China Dolls and Asian Centerfolds and Asian Beauties.' 'Direct to you, petite and willing, you no happy, you no pay, wild, ready to have fun with you' - these are some of the promises. Along with 'full service,' as in 'Full Service Japanese and Chinese Teens.' 'Exotic European Girls' are there, along with 'Chinese Teens in Short Skirts' and 'Sizzling Asian Teen Strippers' and 'Chinese Take-Out, Asian Girls Are Better.' 'Affordable Asians' is yet another ad. Some present the girls as docile and submissive, in the traditional stereotype. 'No attitude' is the promise. They will do what you want.

There are, of course, plenty of ads for home-grown girls, but I do note that the marketing of Asians, and Eastern Europeans, in Las Vegas has increased enormously over the last few years. It would seem obvious that a link with trafficking is the reason.

Little cards with near-nude, provocatively posed girls and brochures are other ways that the escort and massage and entertainment services of Las Vegas advertise. One girl for $35, two-girl special for $60, etc.

Yet another aspect of the Las Vegas sex scene is an increase in 'Gentleman's Clubs,' some displaying just topless but others offering full nudity. Crazy Horse and Cheetah's and others have, of course, been a part of the Las Vegas scene for a long while; but around the city there now seems to be an explosion of nude entertainment. Many girls may be quite happily making lots of money in these clubs - if so, I would be really overjoyed to know this is the case--but we do not really know much in the way of their stories. Nor do we know much about the connection between these establishments and prostitution per se in Las Vegas. In fact, how much sexual activity is voluntary, and how much 'forced,' on the part of girls engaged in the various aspects of the sex industry in this city is impossible to tell. A local investigative reporter who has interviewed Las Vegas and Nevada prostitutes on-and-off for many years says that almost every girl he talked to stuck him as damaged in some way. The few who might actually benefit from selling sex were rare in his opinion.

How many of the escorts are independent operators and how many are controlled by pimps? Prostitution is illegal within Las Vegas itself, but legal in the adjacent county. Girls are sometimes trafficked into the legal establishments by pimps, who take the money. They are also trafficked between the escort services and strip clubs and brothels so as to provide fresh merchandize.

If the women and girls working in the Las Vegas and Nevada sex industries were there because they wanted to be, and were indeed making money, instead of it being siphoned off by pimps, owners, procurers, traffickers, it would be fine by me. I would like to envision a form of prostitution where the girl has control over her body and her finances. But I wonder if this is the case for many of them? Particularly with the huge increase over the past few years of Asians and Eastern Europeans being marketed. In addition to the two dozen rescued during Operation Doll House, how many more girls are being held in debt bondage and sexual slavery around the Las Vegas valley and in the adjacent county with its legal establishments? I doubt if this tiny handful of girls rescued in the raid is even the tip of the sexual misery going on out there.

Trying to get to talk to a girl in one of Nevada's legal brothels is tough. The places are way out in the desert and resemble prisons. If the activity is a prosperous and beneficial one for the girls, why are the places so hard to get into, or out of? And where would a girl go, out in the desert, if she did escape? There are only jackrabbits and coyotes out there.

Back to a question that I raised at the beginning of this article¡Xsince it is the one that troubles me most deeply: Why are the 'johns' who rape the girls not being arrested? Since I have been raped/prostituted, I know that what johns do to us is rape. They pay to rape an already thoroughly raped body. Why are these attackers going free? Please call johns what they are - rapists. And punish them for their sexual brutality.

It puzzles me why one girl raped by her boyfriend is considered so important and 'special' that she has rape crisis centers and counseling and prosecution under the law at her disposal; but if a girl is trafficked, broken, tortured, terrorized and raped over and over, on a daily basis, the many 'customers' who violate her multiple times are not even considered criminals.

If anyone reads this and knows about how the law operates, please let me know if the 'johns' are culpable under a new move in international law to regard any man as a rapist who uses a girl forced into sexual servitude. How does international law intersect with local law?

As you may know, Las Vegas has a famous slogan: 'What happens here, stays here.' What you may not know is that the phrase comes from the military. An uncle of mine, a WWII vet, told me it referred to the GI's buying and raping starving prostituted girls all across Europe and Asia. Obviously, they did not want their wives and girlfriends back home to know about the way they took advantage of women and girls and the way they forced conqueror sex on a destitute population, nor did they want the many babies they fathered and abandoned to come to light. So they all formed a 'pact' around that phrase, 'what happens here, stays here.' My uncle (who bought prostituted bodies in Japan) says he thought the phrase went back at least to WWI, when soldiers in that war behaved the same in France and elsewhere. And, of course, the same soldier/sailor mentality continues to this day, as our military stops off for the regulation sex binge in Bangkok, or our men buy girls trafficked into brothels for them near bases in Korea and other places overseas. 'What happens here, stays here.' An appropriate 'slogan,' no? - for Las Vegas, a major sex-for-sale city.

It seems unlikely that Las Vegas will ever tackle the exploitative aspect of its sex industry. There is too much money to be made. It is also too much a part of the 'glamourous' aspect of Sin City. My temporary solution would be to at least not treat the girls as criminals, no matter if they are 'trafficked' or not. I would set up extensive services (physical and mental health care, job training, mentoring by ex-prostitutes) for those trying to escape prostitution, including actively seeking out enslaved girls since the truly oppressed are often not in a position to escape on their own - too beaten down and terrified and broken. For those who are in the profession voluntarily, I would advocate 'protective' services for these girls that really work in their favor, including decriminalizing it totally for the women, and punishing exploiters and pimps as slavers and rapists. 'Legalizing' has been a failure. It is time to envision a completely different path for protecting girls involved in selling sex. This is matter for a whole article, or book, on its own, for a later time.

I would like to conclude by saying that I hope these poor 'doll-house' girls receive nurturing care for many years to come. They will need the kindness of the generous-hearted people at the Salvation Army, and WestCare, for a long, long time. It takes a whole lifetime to heal from being raped everyday by johns. And even then the sexual scarring is inside forever.

Sphere: Related Content

Rape: Japanese Weapon Of War

Hiroko Tabuchi

Yasuji Kaneko, a foot soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, speaks at his home in Tokyo about countless women he raped in China as a soldier.
Yasuji Kaneko, 87, still remembers the screams of the countless women he raped in China as a foot soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II.
Some were teenagers from the Korean Peninsula serving as sex slaves in military-run brothels. Others were women in villages he and his comrades pillaged as they battled in eastern China.

"They cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died," Kaneko said in an interview at his Tokyo home. "We were the Emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."

Japan's forced prostitution of some 200,000 women in military brothels in the 1930s and '40s has long constituted one of the most horrifying chapters of its wartime rampage across Asia. The top government spokesman was finally forced to acknowledge wrongdoing in 1993.

Now the government is questioning whether the apology was needed.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday publicly denied women were forced into the military brothels in conquered lands, boosting renewed efforts by rightwing politicians who claim the women involved were professional prostitutes rather than victims of abuse.

"There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested," Abe told reporters. "That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there."

The debate is heating up just as a private fund set up to compensate some of the victims is about to expire at the end of March amid accusations it was only a cover for the government to avoid taking responsibility. The government has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by postwar treaties.

Victims are outraged and are pressing ahead with their demands for a full government apology rather than the 1993 statement of remorse by a spokesman.

"The Japanese government must not run from its responsibilities," said Lee Yong Soo, 78, who said she was taken as a 14-year-old from Daegu, Korea, by Japanese soldiers in 1944 to work as a sex slave in Taiwan. "I want them to apologize. To admit that they took me away, when I was a little girl, to be a sex slave. To admit that history."

The issue is not limited to Japan. Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on a resolution that urges the government of Japan to "apologize for and acknowledge" the military's use of sex slaves during the war.

The sex slaves issue has also sparked tensions between Japan and its neighbors, who accuse Tokyo of trying to whitewash wartime atrocities.

Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from the Korean Peninsula and China, were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers in military brothels as so-called "comfort women." Many more were raped at gunpoint as Tokyo's troops rampaged through the region.

After decades of denial, incriminating defense documents discovered in 1992 forced the government to acknowledge that the military government ran brothels populated by women forcibly taken from their homes, and to offer an apology the following year.

The Asian Women's Fund, created in 1995 by the government but independently run and funded by private donations, has provided a way for Japan to compensate former sex slaves without offering official government payments.

Many women have rejected the fund, calling for a direct government apology -- approved by the Diet -- and compensation funded directly by Tokyo.

For rightists, however, Japan's apology went too far. Just hours before Abe spoke, a group of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers met to prepare a proposal that urges the government to water down parts of the 1993 apology and deny direct military involvement.

"Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs, and set prices," said Nariaki Nakayama, chairman of the group of 120 lawmakers, of which Abe is a member.

"And where there's demand, businesses crop up.. ..but to say women were forced by the Japanese military into service is off the mark," he said. "This issue must be reconsidered, based on truth.. ..for the sake of Japanese honor."

Though rightwingers are unapologetic, actual participants say the assertions are far from the truth.

"The brothels were run by the military. There's no question about that," Kaneko said, adding that he was once ordered to guard sex slaves being circulated around military posts.

"There were so many soldiers, and so few comfort women. Sometimes, four or five women had to serve several hundred soldiers," he said.

Those memories are still vivid for Lee, the former sex slave. For 10 months in the northern Taiwanese town of Hsinchu, soldiers raped her, kicked her and cut at her with swords.

"I was so young. I did not understand what had happened to me," Lee said. "My cries then still ring in my ears. Even now, I can't sleep."

Sphere: Related Content