Berlin borough orders removal of ‘comfort women’ statue following pressure from Japan

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1150179.html

by Saltedline

20 comments

  1. ??? By removing that germany literally sours SK relations lmao.

  2. Japan doesn’t consider its committed war crimes as crimes but rather celebrate them with nationalistic pride.

  3. What a disgusting behavior to force the removal without causing political problems 

  5. This article is a bit scant on details. What is the city’s justification for demanding the removal? Who allowed it to be built in the first place?

    In any case, the rumor around this situation will send the message to a lot more people than a statue in some neighborhood of Berlin ever would have. So not a complete loss for the organization.

  6. So reading this i didn’t know what comfort women was and had to look it up. Fuuuuuuck that was a tough read .

  7. Very slippery slope when Germany starts erasing war crimes from history.

  9. We have a similar memorial here in the US in San Francisco (though there might be others). Japan also protested ours, and we basically told Japan to F#$% off and deal with the truth, and we still have our statue.

  10. Read further and it has an issue with the plaque associated with the statue. What does the plaque state? What is on it that would warrant removal of the statue and not rewording or redoing the plaque? Translation errors?

  11. Germany has no duty to showcase crimes between two countries on the other end of the globe. This was a temporary exhibit that will now end as planned. If such exhibits start eliciting negative responses over their end, they will not be allowed in the first place in the future.

  12. It had a *temporary* permit, which ends this September.

    There has been an extension of said permit before. The district claims it cannot legally be extended further. I’m not an expert on the laws and regulations governing temporary memorials, so I have no clue whether this is actually the case, or whether they are talking out of their arses.

  15. Lol this is the result of trying to appease both sides.

  16. You’d figure Germany might be a bit more progressive with acknowledging war crimes.

  17. They removed an Armenian genocide memorial from Cologne last December due to pressure from Turkish lobbying groups, including the Gray Wolves.

    The fucking irony that of all the countries to bend to this sort of pressure, it would be Germany.

  18. Getting sick of this activism.

    Look, pretty sure people are not going to like it, but this subject is a lot more controversial and disputed than people, especially Korean nationalists, want to admit.

    A Harvard Law Professor has gone into this subject. at length, into the minutia.

    [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818820301848?via%3Dihub](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818820301848?via%3Dihub)

    [http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Ramseyer_1075.pdf](http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Ramseyer_1075.pdf)

    A lot of the claims about it are bunk.

    I don’t really care about the nationalism and feelings behind, I care about the evidence, and it’s very mixed.

  20. Harsh repression of Palestinian protests, anti-zionism legitimacy is legally questioned, remove statue remembering horrors of Imperial Japan, Germany is really … active? Well, can’t say SPD being at the steering wheel during this turn is all that surprising, Friedrich Ebert would be proud. Although the greens participating is a nice 21st century touch of dystopia that is just the cherry on top we needed.

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