Life after slavery...50 years later

[Kire]

Life after slavery...50 years later
Aug 2 | Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

I recently came across a compelling documentary while writing a piece on the Korean activist-scholar Yun Chung Ok. Ms. Yun was one of the founders (along with Kim Hye Won and Kim Sin Sil) of The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. She has spoken and published on the plight of these women and continues to be on the Direction Committee at the Council.

In doing research on Ms. Yun, I came across a video entitled Habitual Sadness. The film’s jacket reads: “During World War II an estimated 200,000 women, mostly Korean, were forced by the Japanese into sexual slavery. This experience scarred the women, who hid their shame in silence. Now in their sixties and seventies, the surviving women have dared to speak of their suffering at the hands of their Japanese oppressors.”

The film is an amazing glimpse into the latter lives of survivors of slavery. To see them laughing is a beautiful and amazing thing. While increasing attention is being paid to victims of slavery, the lives of survivors are highlighted less. Many victims of slavery simply want to get on with their lives, away from public scrutiny and troublesome and traumatic official investigations. They simply want to feel as safe as possible for the first time in years. The women in Habitual Sadness lived in community, sharing a large home, household chores, jokes and disagreements. They wrestled with the newfound media attention focused on them when, in the early 1990’s survivor Kim Hak-soon stepped forward to be the first woman to identify herself as a former comfort woman. Her brave willingness to testify publicly, at the age of 68, to the horrors she had survived, galvanized others.

The tenacity of the survivors, and their advocates, represented in the Korean Council and the War and Women’s Human Rights Center, is humbling. They have protested in front of the Japanese embassy every Wednesday since 1992 in an attempt to be formally recognized by the Japanese government!

It makes me think of the recent raids our partners did in India. It makes me think about how important it is to recognize and address the trauma slaves have experienced. This is best accomplished through a gradual (and demanding) process of healing (I’m looking for a word better than ‘recovery’, which, in my opinion, is better than ‘rehabilitation’).

It also made me think of FTS’ upcoming film Dreams Die Hard. It too is a story of survival, of the stubborn tenacity humans have to survive.

The themes here are hope and healing, testimony and tenacity. All are needed to not only end slavery, but support survivors in creating viable lives in its aftermath. This all has gotten my brains stirring, but more on freedom later.

http://freetheslaves.net/blog/

[TomPaine77]

1. Sex Slavery and the US Military

The US military has its own "comfort girls": see Viktor Malarek's 2004 book "The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade", as well as "The Stars and Stripes" for Jan.-Feb. 2006. US bases in Bosnia, Kosovo S. Korea and probably Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine have sex slave brothels --"juicy bars"--just off-post, and are filled with off-duty US servicemen after dark, as well as many Eastern European and East Asian girls, some as young as 13, who thought they were taking legitimate, paid jobs as nannies, teachers, cooks, etc. One in five of these women have university degrees, while the remainder were looking for summer work money to afford going to or staying in university. Instead, they are raped, beaten and totrured on a daily basis. Most never return home again, because of fears of being re-trafficked. Many are murdered by pimps or johns, die of AIDS or Hepatitis C as a result of being forced to have unprotected sex, die from rape injuries, are rendered bedridden for life or die prematurely, or go insane. A large percentage kill themselves after being freed in police raids or being dumped in the streets, often pregnant, of countries where they can't speak the language. And these Soldiers and Marines purport to carry the banner of "freedom" and "decency". "How can Satan cast out Satan"?