Former reporter files defamation lawsuit in Japan over comfort women articles

[GroundIIControl]

Former reporter files defamation lawsuit in Japan over comfort women articles

Lawsuit launched by Takashi Uemura against scholar and publisher who say he made up stories on second world war comfort women published in the Asahi newspaper

PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 3:59pm
UPDATED : Friday, 09 January, 2015, 4:13pm

Associated Press in Japan

Takashi Uemura, a former journalist with the Asahi newspaper, shows a copy of his story on comfort women during a press conference in Tokyo on Friday. Photo: AP

Asahi newspaper reporter sued a magazine publisher and a university professor on Friday, claiming that their criticism of his decades-old report on a former Korean “comfort woman” triggered threats and other serious violations of his rights.

In a suit filed with the Tokyo District Court, Takashi Uemura demanded Bungeishunju Ltd, which publishes the weekly Shukan Bunshun, and Tsutomu Nishioka, a professor at Tokyo Christian University in Chiba Prefecture, pay a total of 16.5 million yen (HK$1.07 million) in damages and issue apologies.

Uemura was involved in the newspaper’s reporting in 1991 of accounts provided by a South Korean woman who had worked at a brothel providing sex for Japanese soldiers during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The plaintiff has taken issue with Nishioka’s criticism that in some articles that he fabricated “facts” and with the magazine, which in its February 6, 2014 edition, ran a headline that partially read, “Asahi Shimbun Reporter who ‘Fabricated Comfort Women’.”

Lee Yong-soo (left) of South Korea speaks in Tokyo at the 12th Asian Solidarity Conference for the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan in June, 2014. Photo: AFP

Through these, according to the lawsuit, the publisher and the professor aroused hostility toward the former reporter and his family even though they had no proof of fabrication.

Last August when the Asahi retracted some of its historical reports about “comfort women,” the newspaper admitted that Uemura’s report in 1991 included an erroneous description but denied there was any fabrication or distortion of facts.

Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Hokkaido, where Uemura works as a part-time lecturer, has received messages protesting against his employment, and threatening calls and letters.

Lawyers for Uemura hope to eliminate the labelling of Uemura as a fabricator and prevent further human rights violations, one of them said.