W

omen’s rights activists lauded the government’s reconsideration of a law that would create a truth and reconciliation commission — but agreed that the proposal was not enough ensure justice for all women victims of conflicts and wars.

“The draft is very thin. It does not specify, for instance, a time limit for ‘the past’,” said International Center for Transitional Justice representative Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem on Monday.

The absence of time limits means that the law might not take into account Indonesian women forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, Sri said.

Fifty of the victims, who were called comfort women (jugun ianfu) by the Japanese, were previously
interviewed by researcher Hilde Janssen.

Hilde said that several former comfort women lived in poverty, alone, in senior citizens’ homes, and cannot have children due to repeated sexual assault and drugs taken to abort or prevent pregnancies.

There is a growing recognition of the comfort women, she added, highlighting growing optimism that there can be justice for women who are victims violence in war or conflict.

“People at a high level are breaking silence,” Hilde said.

The former comfort women and other Indonesian women whose rights have been violated during war or conflict are still poorly recognized in the country, she said.

In 1995, then Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama offered an apology to comfort women
who suffered emotional and physical wounds. In an apparent about-face in 2007, then prime minister Shinzo Abe said that there was no evidence of coercion of comfort women.

The Japanese government never paid compensation to the comfort women directly. It established a
private foundation, the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF), to gather funds to pay compensation to women in several Asian countries including Korea, China, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Indonesia received ¥1.3 billion (US$14.6 million) over the course of 12 years from the AWF.

Arimbi Heroepoetri from the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) said that the government was in error when it used money from the AWF to build homes for old people instead of giving it directly to the victims.

“All they had to do is listen to what the victims wanted. It should have been the victims who decided whether a violation could be forgiven,” Arimbi said.

She added that the proposed commission should pay careful consideration to women, who often bore a greater burden during conflicts and wars.

Komnas Perempuan recorded 72 cases of violence against women between 1998 to 2005 in Poso, Central Sulawesi, during a series of religious clashes: Fifty-eight cases involved sexual violence and 56 cases involved personal relationships between women and local security officers.

In 2006, the commission received reports from 122 women victims of the New Order’s 1965 massacre of communists, which alleged rights violations such as kidnapping, forced labor and sexual assault.