By Stacy Sullivan

On December 3-4, 2001, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal held a legal hearing in The Hague about Japan's role in setting up brothels to service Imperial Army soldiers during World War Two. The exercise - essentially a repeat of a hearing held a year ago in Tokyo - was convened by a group of women's rights activists. Although the Tribunal lacks legal authority, it has nonetheless forced the Japanese government to acknowledge its culpability, and provided a sense of justice for the wartime victims.

Although at the end of the war, the Allied Forces established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), in which many Japanese military and political leaders were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other war crimes, the plight of the estimated 200,000 Korean, Indonesian, Chinese, Filipino, Dutch, Malaysian, and Taiwanese women who were raped and sexually enslaved in brothels was never addressed.

The issue did not gain public awareness until the 1980s, when most of the victims were in their 60s. As they began speaking out, human rights and women's activists across Asia championed their cause. International journalists and scholars started investigating the extent of Japanese government and military involvement. As it had done for decades, the Japanese government refused to admit any responsibility in building the brothels, claiming instead that the women were prostitutes who had consented to their recruitment.

The first lawsuit on behalf of the “comfort women” was filed in Japan in 1991. In 1993, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights addressed the issue at the Vienna World Conference. As pressure began to mount, the Japanese government admitted that it might have played a role in establishing the brothels, and in 1995, it helped set up the Asian Women's Fund, which aimed to assist victims through private donations.  But Japan still refused to accept legal responsibility for the wartime brothels.

Frustrated by the government's ambiguous response, the former “comfort women,” aided by various women’s groups, sought other routes of legal redress. Led by the Violence Against Women in War Network, a group of women's NGOs based in Asia, they decided to organize what is known in legal parlance as a "people's tribunal."

This consisted of a mock court comprised of 10 prosecution teams representing the countries of the victims, and a panel of judges who had significant experience in international law. Housed in the Lucent Dance theatre, the tribunal took place over five days. There were 390 participants, including 75 victims from eight countries. The prosecutors presented indictments, and the judges - many of whom had served on United Nations war crimes tribunals - heard from survivors, legal experts, academics, and two former Japanese soldiers, who testified about their involvement in and use of the brothels. Textual evidence included diaries written by “comfort women” and previously-unknown official documents from Japanese government archives and ministries. 

The testimonies and evidence established that women were forced into brothels through kidnapping, coercion and deception. They were transported in Japanese military vehicles to wherever the authorities ordered. To further deny the women’s individuality, the military gave them Japanese names. When the war ended in Japanese defeat, the soldiers allegedly killed the women, or abandoned them under allied bombing. The testimony also documented the psychological effects the women endured in the decades after the war.

The prosecution teams argued that the IMTFE proceedings following World War II were incomplete because they did not consider rape and sexual enslavement as war crimes, and that accordingly, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal could be considered as an addendum to the earlier proceedings.

At the end of the session, the judges deliberated for a day, then rendered their verdict. They declared that the systematic institution of the brothels was a matter of military policy that constituted crimes against humanity under then-applicable law. They also declared Emperor Hirohito guilty of war crimes based on command responsibility, meaning that he knew or should have known of the offenses.

The Crimes of War Project has assembled the following list of web sites about the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal.  

For a live web cast of the Hague proceedings of the Women's International War Crimes tribunal

For a summary of the findings of the December 2000 Tribunal in Tokyo

Final Judgement of 2000 Tokyo Tribunal in the Hague

For the various Asian NGOs involved in setting up the tribunal

For a timeline of events leading up to Tribunal.

For web audio of some of the testimony at the December 2000 trial.