President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. is not expected to raise matters on the Filipino "comfort women" during his visit to Japan, an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Wednesday.
In a pre-departure briefing ahead of the President's official working visit to the Land of the Rising Sun, DFA Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs Neal Imperial said this is because all war-related compensation claims by the Philippines government are already settled.
"All war-related claims are deemed to have been settled by our 1956 reparations agreement with Japan," Imperial said.
But for private claims, the diplomat said the government will not stop them from doing so.
"We will not stop of course the victims cause this is an atrocious violence against the women during the war," he said.
On Tuesday, Jan. 31, surviving Filipino women who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military during World War II called on the Japanese government to acknowledge its war crimes and resolve the "comfort women" issue.
In a statement, Lila Pilipina, an organization helping the Filipino women in their fight for justice, said Japan must "take the necessary steps toward a fair and long-overdue resolution of the comfort women issue."
During the Japanese occupation, Japanese soldiers allegedly abducted about a thousand Filipino women to serve them.