War always calls to mind
destruction and chaos. At the very mention of the word, one would immediately
think of screaming masses running in terror and confusion, millions of bloody
corpses littering the streets, great cities laid in burning ruin. Formidable
battalions, ballistic missiles, and atomic bombs strike fear into the hearts of
less militarily capable nations. But 89-year old Hilaria Bustamante, and many
other women like her, have been scarred by perhaps a more damaging, yet understated weapon of war— rape and sexual
slavery.
Bustamante was among the
thousands of “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese
military during World War II. Seventy three years ago, Bustamante, who was then
16, was abducted by Japanese soldiers, beaten, made to wash clothes and cook,
and was repeatedly raped for 15 months.[1]
Prompted by the formal agreement made by Japan with South Korea over comfort
women in December 2015, Bustamante and her fellow survivors are now asking for
a similar public apology and reparations from Japan. Several quiet protests
were staged during the five-day state visit to the Philippines of Emperor
Akihito and Empress Michiko.
In 2010, these sentiments for
justice was translated into a petition filed with the Supreme Court charging
the Executive Department with grave abuse of discretion for its refusal to
espouse the comfort women’s claims for official apology and other forms of
reparations against Japan. Petitioners also assail the validity of the Treaty
of Peace with Japan, arguing that brutal rape and enslavement constituted
crimes against humanity, and the Philippine government’s waiver of the victims’
claims constitute a breach of its legal obligation not to afford impunity for
such crimes.[2]
Although the Court correctly
ruled that the Executive Department has the exclusive prerogative to determine
whether to espouse petitioners' claims against Japan, Vinuya v. Romulo exposes the weakness of the position of
individuals as subjects of international law. A national, in order to file a
case against a foreign state, must course it through his or her country. And it is not unlikely that a country may
choose to forego justice in the interest of peace. Such prerogative is a matter
of foreign policy, a political question that is beyond the realm of courts. In
this case, the “Executive Department has already decided that it is to the best
interest of the country to waive all claims of its nationals for reparations
against Japan in the Treaty of Peace of 1951.”[3]
Economic reparations to the comfort women will be made through the Asian
Women’s Fund established by the Japanese government. Should the Filipina
victims want a formal apology and acknowledgement from the Japanese government,
as in the case of South Korea, the only remedy left to them is an appeal to the
executive department to take up their case.
On the other hand, there are
developments in international law regarding rape and sexual slavery. The
comfort women of the Japanese are not alone in their plight. Throughout
history, when hostilities occurred, women suffered similar ordeals— the Rape of
Nanking, brothels in the concentration camps of Germany, the systematic rape of
women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This increase in rape cases and sexual abuse
during war led to a change in perspective in international humanitarian law.
Rape is no longer viewed as a mere incidence of war, but may also be a
strategic weapon to cripple and subjugate the enemy.
In her paper Rape as a Weapon of War and its Long-term Effects on Victims and
Society, Clifford (2008) viewed rape as not just an attack on an individual
but also on the society the individual belongs to. She goes on to quote
Nordstromm (1991), stating that, “Rape, as with all terror-warfare, is not
exclusively an attack on the body— it is an attack on the ‘body-politic’. Its
goal is not to maim or kill one person but to control an entire socio political
process by crippling it. It is an attack directed equally against personal
identity and cultural integrity”.[4]
This new treatment of the role of rape in war is epitomized in the momentous
case of Dragoljub Kunarac et al.[5],
the first case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavoia (ICTY) in which the accused were convicted of rape as a crime
against humanity, marking the first time that an international tribunal had
prosecuted sexual slavery. In 2008, the United Nations Security Council passed
UN Resolution 1820 which stresses the need for “the exclusion of sexual
violence crimes from amnesty provisions in the context of conflict resolution
processes”, and which calls upon member states to comply with their obligations
to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, and emphasizes “the importance
of ending impunity for such acts.”[6]
Optimistically, the growing
recognition of the international community of rape and sexual slavery as crimes
against humanity will influence states to strongly condemn such acts, and
pressure violating states to make reparations, acknowledge their wrongdoings,
issue formal apologies to the victims, and make commitments to never repeat
such heinous offenses. Peace is not only achieved through the cessation of hostilities.
The devastation within the individual, the emotional and psychological trauma suffered
by the victims also warrants our attention. Hilaria Bustamante, along with the
countless others who lost a part of themselves during the war, deserves to be
free from the terrible nightmare that haunts them for most of their lives.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/world/asia/japan-philippines-comfort-women-emperor-akihito.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article
[2] Vinuya v. Romulo, G.R. No. 162230. April
28, 2010
[3]
Id.
[4]
Clifford, Cassandra. 2008. Rape as a
Weapon of War and its Long-term Effects on Victims and Society. Retrieved
September 19, 2010 from
www.interdisciplinary.net/ptb/hhv/vcce/vch7/Clifford%20paper.pdf
[5]
“Kunarac, Dragoljub”. 2010. The Hague Justice Portal. Retrieved September 18,
2010 from http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/eCache/DEF/6/082.html
[6]
United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner. 2008. Rape: Weapon of War. Retrieved February
5, 2016 from http://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/rapeweaponwar.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment