A women’s rights group staged a protest Friday in front of the Japanese embassy in Pasay City, south of Manila, urging an apology from Japan’s government for the alleged sexual enslavement of Filipino women during World War II, an epa journalist reports.

The rally, organized by the Gabriela group, included about 20 people, with four women claiming to be former “comfort women”, the name for women whom Japanese soldiers are said to have enslaved across Asia for sexual purposes.

Members of the group shouted slogans expressing concern that the growing military ties between the Philippines and Japan could lead to Japanese soldiers being based in the Southeast Asian country, exacerbating prostitution among Filipino women.

The protesters held banners with messages saying that there has been no justice for the women 71 years after the war ended and “No to another generation of comfort women.”

There were police officers in the vicinity of the protest but they didn’t intervene.

At one point, a security guard from the embassy came out and asked media personnel not to take photographs of the embassy.

Late last year the South Korean and Japanese governments reached an agreement over the “comfort women” dispute in which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued an apology and pledged to provide millions of dollars to a South Korean foundation giving support to Korean women used as wartime sex slaves.

However, there are no reports of the Philippines government working on a similar agreement with Japan. EFE

Pasay City, Philippines, Aug 12 (EFE)