STORY: Philippine women group slams Japan being remorseless to WWII cruelties
SHOOTING TIME: Aug.14, 2024
DATELINE: Aug. 14, 2024
LENGTH: 00:01:54
LOCATION: Manila
CATEGORY: POLITICS

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the protest rally
2. SOUNDBITE (English): SHARON CABUSAO-SILVA, Lila Pilipina executive director

STORYLINE:

An organization fighting for justice for Philippine wartime sexual slavery victims of the Japanese troops during World War II slammed Japan's being remorseless to its cruelties and atrocities during the war.

"Lila Pilipina deplores (the Japanese government's) lack of genuine remorse for its wartime crimes against Filipino comfort women -- 79 years after the end of World War II," Lila Pilipina executive director Sharon Cabusao-Silva said.
   
"It is almost eight decades, yet the Japanese government has not only refused to act on its responsibility to heal the wounds it inflicted on Filipino women and the nation as a whole," Silva said, adding Japan "continues to deceptively claim that they have already apologized for these crimes to evade responsibility and to justify its war agenda in the country."
   
"Lila Pilipina" means League of Filipino Grandmother in Tagalog, a major language of the Philippines. The group also slammed the reciprocal access agreement signed last month by the Philippines and Japan.
   
"With the signing of the agreement, Japan, under the auspices of its senior partner, the United States, is reopening the country to the vulnerability of war," Silva said.
   
"Lila Pilipina condemns this connivance between the Japanese and Philippine governments," Silva said, adding that the U.S.-Japan military alliance, with the approval of the government, "is turning the Philippines into a huge storehouse for all kinds of armaments and war material, the full scale of which will be virtually impossible for the public to know."

SOUNDBITE (English): SHARON CABUSAO-SILVA, Lila Pilipina executive director
"We find ourselves now under an era where Japanese soldiers can again move unhampered within the Philippine territory. And it is something that we really feel so bad about. We do not want Japanese soldiers, we do not want the Japanese army here. We do not want war in our country."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Manila.
(XHTV)