‘Comfort women’ disappointed with UNESCO’s delay

China’s “comfort women” and others expressed disappointment at the delay in registering documents on the list of the Memory of the World International Register.

UNESCO announced 78 new nominations out of 130 proposals to join the register on Monday.

Recommended for postponement were the Voice of the “Comfort Women” and Documentation on “Comfort Women” and Japanese Army Discipline. The International Advisory Committee suggested concerned parties make “a joint nomination to encompass as far as possible all rele- vant documents.”

“Comfort women” is a euphemism for women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied areas before and during World War II.

Su Zhiliang, director of Shanghai Normal University’s research center on comfort women, expressed on Tuesday his regret over the decision.

In May 2016, groups from China, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Indonesia and Japan made an official request for the listing of more than 2,700 documents on the register.

Su blamed the delay on Japanese right-wingers. Japan withheld its UNESCO dues of about $35 million after the listing in 2015 of documents regarding the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo.