BULLETINS
Takbo Para Kay Lola
SunStar pampanga
Thursday,March 5, 2009
CLTV-36 vice president and Women’s Month executive committee vice-chairperson Sonia Soto announced on Monday that the “Takbo para kay Lola” (Run for the Malaya Lolas) has been set on March 28.
Soto said the benefit run for the cause of the Malaya Lolas of Mapaniki, Candaba was endorsed and approved by San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez as part of the month-long observance of Women’s Month.
The fund-raiser is a project of the Laus Group-owned regional TV network in cooperation with the executive committee and local officials of of Candaba headed by Mayor Jerry Pelayo, a supporter of the town’s comfort women.
“The funds which will be raised in the benefit run will all be turned over to the Malaya Lolas,” Soto said, adding that “Mayor Rodriguez, our honorary woman, has been very kind to support and allow us to conduct this cause for women.”
She said even CLTV-36 is supportive, planning to come out with programs like “Women Are Great Inspirations” (Wagi) and “So to Speak” during the Women’s Month celebration.
“I am very happy to note that our Philippine National Police (PNP) here have pledged 500 runners for the cause. Another 250 runners from our city will also join the benefit run,” Soto said.
The Malaya Lolas are women who were victims of sexual abuses by Japanese soldiers during World War II.
Sixty-five years after, the Malaya Lolas summoned their courage to bare to the whole world the secret of the sexual abuses they suffered in the hands of Japanese soldiers in a “bahay na pula” or garrison during World War II.
Now in their twilight years, the surviving women are trying to bravely articulate their thoughts and feelings kept even from their own families. Several had perished without seeing their cause come to fruition.
The Mapaniki women suffered great torment in the hands of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers in 1944 just as American forces, alongside Filipinos in the guerilla movement, fiercely scored victories against them in almost all provinces as the Second World War neared its end.
In November of that year, according to the Malaya Lolas, Japanese soldiers snatched men, women, and children from their houses and led them at gunpoint to a two-room school. The women and children were separated from the men who were all shot to death after being severely tortured.
The Malaya Lolas described how the lifeless bodies of the Mapaniki men were thrown into a school building and turned into ashes after Japanese soldiers set the school on fire.
When the Japanese left the village, they took with them all the young women aged nine to 30 years old, leaving behind older women and young children who searched for the remains of their loved ones.
The young women were then made to walk three kilometers across rice paddies and rivers carrying loads of goods looted by the soldiers from the people of Mapaniki.
The long walk ended in a house called "bahay na pula" or red house, a garrison that housed some 200 Japanese soldiers.
The women were distributed to groups of sex-starved Japanese soldiers in tents, bedrooms, in the kitchen, and other places inside and outside of the “bahay na pula” where they were raped throughout the night with some mothers and daughters even being raped by several men inside the same rooms.
The women of Mapaniki are part of Malaya Lolas, organized in August 1996 by Filipino comfort women nationwide who continuously demand justice, apology, and legal compensation from the Japanese government.
The Malaya Lolas is a program of the Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights (Ascent), an international non-government organization (NGO) working on training, documentation, and monitoring of women’s human rights violations, specifically in Asia.
Locally, the Malaya Lolas are supported by various women’s groups and civic organizations led by the Pagkakaisa ng Kababihan para sa Inang Bayan or Kaisa-KA. (Jovi T. De Leon)
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