Netherlands Demands Japan Fully Recognises 'Comfort Girls' www.nisnews.nl/public/091107_1.htm iris chang.pdf THE HAGUE, 09/11/07 - The Lower House wants Japan to fully recognise the fate of the so-called 'comfort girls' and offer compensation to survivors. All parties yesterday voted in favour of a conservative (VVD) motion aimed at this. Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has said he is prepared to implement the unanimous motion. This means he will convey the wishes of the House to Tokyo. "The motion asks from Japan that it fully recognises the fate of the comfort girls, offers apologies, takes full responsibility for this war crime, offers damages to the comfort girls still alive and sees to it that there is objective lesson material about Japan's role in WWII in general and in relation to the comfort girls in particular," according to VVD MP Hans van Baalen. Three women who were forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers before and during the Second World War began a tour of four European cities in the Netherlands in The Hague last Friday. They presented a petition to Lower House standing committee on foreign affairs chairman Hans van Baalen, in which the House was asked to put pressure on Japan as has now happened. During the Second World War, an estimated 200,000 girls and women from various Asian countries were systematically press-ganged, raped and abused by the Japanese army. This also happened in present-day Indonesia, a Dutch colony at that time. Japan officially apologised in 1993, but parliament never approved this. According to the House, Japanese politicians have qualified or trivialised the fate of the comfort girls.