An Umno Youth representative was barred from raising the issue of Malaysian 'comfort women' at the United Nations Human Rights Conference in 1993, a Japanese university don claimed.

Nakahara Michiko, lecturer and researcher at Waseda University, said the Youth wing's international bureau was stopped by then chief Najib Tun Razak ( photo ) from attending the UN conference in Austria to highlight the plight of Malaysian 'comfort women'.

(Women and girls detained by Japanese forces during Word War Two and used as sex slaves were known as 'comfort women'.)

Nakahara presented her paper entitled 'Comfort Women in Malaysia - The Testimony of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal 2000, Tokyo' at the Third Malaysian Studies conference which ended at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) on Wednesday.

She claimed in her paper that Najib had received a telephone call from the Japanese Embassy telling him the matter of Malaysian comfort women should not be pursued at the UN meet by Umno Youth representative Mustapha Yaakub

"Najib admitted to a reporter of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that he had stopped Mustapha from attending the conference and submitting his report," said Nakara.

"He (Najib) explained to the reporter that he had persuaded Mustapha not to attend the conference because according to him, as far as the comfort women issue was concerned, the facts were not well established," she added.

"In this way more than 3,500 appeals from Malaysian survivors of Japanese atrocities including attempted murder, forced labour, rape and sexual slavery, who bravely came out in 1993 after more than half-a-century, were suppressed," said Nakahara.

Sex slaves

The issue of Japanese military sex slaves in Malaysia was highlighted when Mustapha returned from attending a conference of the International Investigation Committee on the War Crimes of Japan held in Kathmandu, Nepal in October 1992.

Mustapaha subsequently undertook the responsibility for collecting information on Japanese war atrocities against Malaysians during the Japanese Occupation from 1942 to 1945. Within four months, Mustapha had reportedly received letters from 3,500 people, including former comfort women.

He planned to present a report based on their testimonies at the 1993 UN Human Rights Conference.

However, right after Mustapha's press release calling for survivors of Japanese atrocities to come forward, he received a call from the Japanese Embassy informing him that compensation arrangements between the two governments had been concluded.

Mustapha accordingly planned to attend the UN conference and submit his report as a private individual but was told by Najib not to go.

MCA duped

Nakahara, who has interviewed several Malaysian comfort women, attributed the high number of responses to Mustapha's call for victims to come forward to the fact that he was an official of Umno Youth.

"The Malaysian people believed their government had finally decided to tackle the problem and demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government," she said.

"For the first time since the end of the war, the older generation had begun to speak out. After suppressing their feelings for more than half-a-century, they finally started writing about their experiences which they had kept secret," she added.

Nakahara said following Mustapha's efforts, the MCA also appealed for Japanese war victims to come forward, and among the responses were letters from three Malaysian women captured by Japanese soldiers and forced to serve as comfort women.

"However, MCA public complaints bureau chief Michael Chong was then invited to lunch by someone from the Japanese Embassy and told the same story about compensation. He then gave up his investigation," said Nakahara.