This statue aims for peace and understanding, but can’t find a home

1 week ago 3

A young girl sits on stage, her hair in plaits, her hands in fists.

For a year, the 60-kilogram bronze statue representing Chinese comfort women has been in the garage of Chinese Australians for Peace president Jimmy Li.

On Saturday, at a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, she was unveiled to fanfare and original Chinese music composition and dance, but she remains without a permanent public home. By night, she would be back in the garage.

Jimmy Li is the president of the Chinese Australians for Peace Association. The association is hoping to secure a place where the Chinese comfort woman statue can be permanently displayed.

Comfort women, according to the United Nations, is a euphemism for hundreds of thousands of girls and women from several countries, including Korea, China and the Philippines, who were abducted and forced into sexual slavery before and during World War Two by the then Japanese Imperial Army.

Li said the statue, dedicated to “all women who endured unimaginable suffering during times of war”, was created thanks to fundraising and stood as a powerful symbol and “a reminder that we have not forgotten their pain”.

“It also reflects our commitment that we will continue to stand up for peace and stand up for human dignity and stand up for human rights,” he said.

But finding the statue a permanent home has been fraught, as it has been for other such statues across the world, with the Japanese government pressing for their removal.

In NSW in 2016, the Uniting Church-run Exodus Foundation agreed to place a comfort woman statue in its gardens after Ashfield Council shut down the proposal for a public display due to opposition.

The consulate-general of Japan in Melbourne said in a statement that the “comfort women issue, including individual claims” had been legally settled.

In a meeting of foreign ministers in 2015, Japan and the Republic of Korea reached an agreement to resolve the issue “finally and irreversibly”, and in 2016, the Japanese government contributed 1 billion yen ($12.3 million) to 35 out of 47 former comfort women who were still alive at the time. But consequent lawsuits have been filed by former comfort women and others against the Japanese government.

The consulate-general said claims of groups that promoted the installation of the comfort women statues included expressions such as “sex slaves”, which it said was “not supported by historical evidence”.

“We are concerned that the installation of such statues will create division and conflict, leaving wounds in local communities which previously enjoyed peaceful relations,” it said.

It also says there is no official figure for the number of comfort women, nor documents the Japanese government could identify about comfort women being forcefully taken away by military or government authorities.

Former comfort women have spoken in the recently released documentary The Last Daughters about being captured by Japanese soldiers and forced into sexual slavery.

Christine Kim, secretary of Friends of Comfort Women in Melbourne, told ABC it was difficult to get council approval to display comfort women statues in public.

Students denounce Japan’s exports control on South Korea in 2019, near a statue of a girl symbolising wartime comfort women in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

“They are usually reluctant as they perceive the peace statue to be political and controversial – not wanting to offend the Japanese community or show support for one particular community,” said Kim.

Speaking at Saturday’s event, Kim told the 100-strong crowd the statues were reminders “that we must come together, put our differences aside” for the justice of comfort women and to create a brighter, safer future.

The Korean Society of Victoria installed its own statue depicting a comfort woman outside its Oakleigh headquarters in 2019.

Li had originally hoped the Chinese association’s statue would sit side by side with the Korean comfort woman, but opposition within the Korean Society of Victoria community has led Li to find another site.

Hoon Yoo, of the Korean Society of Victoria, said that while he supported a public display of comfort women of different nationalities, the community was divided about using the Korean site for the Chinese statue.

Ari, a monument in Berlin to the comfort women forced into prostitution by Japanese forces before and during World War II. The Japanese government has repeatedly requested that the monument be removed.

Yoo said some community members felt a Chinese comfort woman statue would be more appropriate on property owned by the Chinese community. He said the society was unaware that Saturday’s event at the Korean site was the unveiling of the statue.

Monash University associate professor of Japanese studies Beatrice Trefalt said it had become complicated because Australian public spaces could get stuck between Korean, Chinese and Japanese governments “and so it ends up being that nobody wants to touch it, which is a terrible shame”.

She said what should be about sexual violence as a war crime instead becomes “tied in to questions of national image and power, which relegates the suffering of those women”.

A Korean community member, who asked not to give her name, said not all the Korean community agreed with the comfort woman statue that was already outside the society’s building.

“It stirs up a lot of emotions that are understandably still there for many, and there are some in the community that acknowledge that but don’t want to have that presentation there every day to remind us of the past,” she said.

“We would like to focus on rebuilding for the future, rebuilding the relationships for the future.”

But Li said public display was essential because it acknowledged the suffering endured by women during the war.

“The pain of war is still deeply felt, and we hope these memorials will help future generations understand how precious peace is and why it must be protected,” he said.

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