War Victims Women

The 9-month-old attempt to force "ethnic cleansing" on the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina has produced waves of shocking images. First, the photographs of skeletal Muslim men behind barbed wire in Serbian-held camps and the ruined, beseiged city of Sarajevo, where the onset of winter has made the battle even more deadly. And then reports on the fate of women and children, who compose three-quarters of the estimated 2.5 million people who have been forced from their homes in the conflict.

Ten years ago, a frail 67-year-old South Korean woman broke half a century of silence and publicly spoke of her torment as a sex slave for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Hak Soon Kim told how she and countless other impoverished Asian girls and women were snatched from their homes to serve Japanese soldiers, who beat and raped them.

A dazed, 60-year-old woman spends most of her day staring at the wind-swept leaves around her refugee camp, waiting listlessly for the end of her life. Her wounds from gang rape by soldiers are more emotional than physical, but she has neither the strength nor the will to recover. A 28-year-old in the fetid basement of Zagreb's mosque is too worried about her children to apply the one salve she says would end the suffering inflicted by multiple rapes.

We will never see their faces, hear their cries or know their names. But Japanese journalist Yayori Matsui is among activists determined to keep the memories of 200,000 murdered girls alive. And to change the attitudes that made possible the tragedy of their brief lives and brutal deaths during World War II. Matsui, chairwoman of the Violence Against Women in War Network in Japan and a chief organizer of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery (held Dec.

Ten years ago, a frail 67-year-old South Korean woman broke half a century of silence and publicly spoke of her torment as a sex slave for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Hak Soon Kim told how she and countless other impoverished Asian girls and women were snatched from their homes to serve Japanese soldiers, who beat and raped them.

We will never see their faces, hear their cries or know their names. But Japanese journalist Yayori Matsui is among activists determined to keep the memories of 200,000 murdered girls alive. And to change the attitudes that made possible the tragedy of their brief lives and brutal deaths during World War II. Matsui, chairwoman of the Violence Against Women in War Network in Japan and a chief organizer of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery (held Dec.

It's not the memory of her husband's death while defending their home in eastern Bosnia or the 100-mile walk through exploding battlefields that haunts Amira and keeps her from sleeping. Each night, just when the comforting oblivion of slumber is about to engulf her, she hears the heavy thud of Bosnian Serb soldiers' boots and is jolted awake. "They would come in and walk among us, to see who they wanted to take," she recalled recently.

Half a century after as many as 200,000 Asian women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army, a memorial library has been established in Los Angeles' Koreatown to carry on an international campaign to bring justice and reparations for the victims of one of the cruelest chapters in history.

In the first judgment of its kind, a Japanese court ruled Monday that the government must pay compensation to three South Korean women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II. In handing down the ruling, Judge Hideaki Chikashita of the Yamaguchi District Court in southern Japan said that Tokyo had neglected to fulfill its legal duty to repair the anguish suffered by the "comfort women," who were forced to work in brothels for Japan's former Imperial Army.

In the first judgment of its kind, a Japanese court ruled Monday that the government must pay compensation to three South Korean women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II. In handing down the ruling, Judge Hideaki Chikashita of the Yamaguchi District Court in southern Japan said that Tokyo had neglected to fulfill its legal duty to repair the anguish suffered by the "comfort women," who were forced to work in brothels for Japan's former Imperial Army.

Half a century after as many as 200,000 Asian women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army, a memorial library has been established in Los Angeles' Koreatown to carry on an international campaign to bring justice and reparations for the victims of one of the cruelest chapters in history.

It's not the memory of her husband's death while defending their home in eastern Bosnia or the 100-mile walk through exploding battlefields that haunts Amira and keeps her from sleeping. Each night, just when the comforting oblivion of slumber is about to engulf her, she hears the heavy thud of Bosnian Serb soldiers' boots and is jolted awake. "They would come in and walk among us, to see who they wanted to take," she recalled recently.

The 9-month-old attempt to force "ethnic cleansing" on the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina has produced waves of shocking images. First, the photographs of skeletal Muslim men behind barbed wire in Serbian-held camps and the ruined, beseiged city of Sarajevo, where the onset of winter has made the battle even more deadly. And then reports on the fate of women and children, who compose three-quarters of the estimated 2.5 million people who have been forced from their homes in the conflict.

A dazed, 60-year-old woman spends most of her day staring at the wind-swept leaves around her refugee camp, waiting listlessly for the end of her life. Her wounds from gang rape by soldiers are more emotional than physical, but she has neither the strength nor the will to recover. A 28-year-old in the fetid basement of Zagreb's mosque is too worried about her children to apply the one salve she says would end the suffering inflicted by multiple rapes.