Japan To Face Claims

The Sun Herald

Saturday August 7, 1993

SOME 12,000 Indonesians used as sex slaves, forced labour or army conscripts by the Japanese during World War II are banding together to seek compensation from Tokyo.

The majority are former forcedlabour conscripts, known as "Romushas", who have registered at offices of the Indonesian Legal Institute (LBH) in several major cities since April, lawyers said.

The Japanese rounded up the Romushas during their occupation of the then Dutch colony of the East Indies between 1942 and 1945 and sent them to work in road, railway and bridge building in Malaya, Thailand and Burma.

"As of today, at least 11,900 former Romushas have registered at this office in their efforts to seek compensation from the Japanese government,"lawyer Ari Suseta of the Yogyakarta chapter office of the Legal Aid Institute(LBH) said.

The lawyers will urge Tokyo to apologise for their crimes during the war, pay compensation to war victims and mention the story of the war crimes in history textbooks.

Also registering at the LBH offices, although in much fewer number, were former Heihos, Indonesian drafted by the Japanese army, and "comfort women"who had been forced into prostitution to serve the Imperial Japanese Army.

The Heihos have demanded that the Japanese Government pay their wages in arrears.

Last week the Japanese Government admitted for the first time that it tricked and cajoled women into serving as sex slaves during the war.

Lawyer Hasby Ansyori of the North Sumatra LBH chapter said the organisation would begin efforts to obtain compensation for the former Romushas, through the Japanese consulate in Medan.

He said he believed there were enough grounds for him to sue the Japanese Government in Indonesia, saying that what the Japanese war government had done was "a criminal act of fraud" that could be tried under Indonesian law.

He said surviving labour conscripts from North Sumatra, estimated at 2,000, were all old and now mostly sick or living in difficult conditions.