Groups offer flowers to protest comfort woman statue’s removal

MANILA, Philippines — Rights groups yesterday commemorated the Independence Day rites in Manila by offering flowers at the site of the comfort woman statue, the removal of which they said was due to pressure from Japan.

Lila Filipina and Gabriela yesterday led other groups under the campaign #Flowers4Lolas at the site along Roxas Boulevard in Malate to condemn the statue’s removal on April 27 supposedly for a floodway control project.

But according to Kaisa sa Kaunlaran co-founder Teresita Ang See, there are no excavation works at the site, bolstering her view that the statue was removed to give way to the whims of the Japanese government.

The statue was erected to commemorate the Japanese atrocities during World War II, when at least 1,000 Filipino girls and women were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.

President Duterte earlier said the erection of the statue forms part of the country’s freedom of expression, but suggested transferring it somewhere else.

Ang See, however, said relocating the statue to a private place would defeat the purpose of making public the Japanese atrocities during the war.

Ang See said she once wrote to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and was told by an official that the statue had to give way to prevent cutting off billions of loans and aid from Japan to the Philippines.

The seven-foot bronze statue of a blindfolded woman garbed with a veil was removed a few days before the 51st Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors in Manila in May.

“It’s just succumbing to pressure. There are no other countries who gave way to that threat,“ Ang See said, referring to other countries where comfort woman statues were also put up.

She considered it a ruse that the Manila city government and the Department of Public Works and Highways cited a floodway project in removing the statue.

She said the statue, now under the custody of its sculptor Jonas Roces, will go on a school tour starting in September to remind the youth about the atrocities of the Japanese soldiers during the war.

While there are potential places to relocate the statue where Japan war crimes happened, Ang See said the statue is best placed by the Manila Bay, where the battle for the liberation of Manila also took place.

She said the sculptor is also being commissioned to put up several other comfort woman statues all over the country, especially in provinces where there are memorials for the Japanese forces who died during the war. – Jose Rodel Clapano