So To Speak: When justice is clear but action is absent
The Commission on Human Rights has spoken.
In its Gender Ombud Policy Advisory, it calls for “full reparation, including recognition, redress, and official apology for the Malaya Lolas.”
It is clear. It is correct.
And it is long overdue.
More telling is what it admits:
that the Philippine State has “failed to provide reparation, social support and recognition commensurate with the harm suffered.”
Let us not soften that.
The State has failed.
But to understand why this matters—and why it is still not enough—we must go back.
Mapaniqui, Candaba, Pampanga.
November 23, 1944.
Filipino women were rounded up by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.
They were not combatants.
They were civilians.
They were taken to Bahay na Pula.
And there, they were raped—repeatedly, systematically—for days. Some, for weeks.
This was not random brutality.
It was a system.
Wartime sexual slavery.
Across Asia, women were reduced to what history would later call “comfort women.”
In Pampanga, they became known as the Malaya Lolas.
Free in name.
But never freed from what was done to them.
For years, they were silent.
Not because they forgot—
but because they were made to carry the shame of a crime committed against them.
When they finally spoke, they were already old.
And what did they ask for?
Not revenge.
Just recognition.
Just an apology.
Just dignity.
Just justice.
Decades passed.
And still—nothing close to justice.
Instead, the response was this:
Medical aid.
Social services.
Pensions.
Necessary, yes.
But let us be clear:
Welfare is not justice.
Ayuda is not reparation.
Even memory has been neglected.
Bahay na Pula—a site of horror—has been left to decay.
Memorials have been removed.
Stories are fading.
And when memory fades, accountability disappears.
The CHR is right.
Reparation must be “adequate, effective… and proportional to the gravity of the harm suffered.”
We already know what that means:
Compensation.
Apology.
Rehabilitation.
Memorialization.
Guarantees of non-repetition.
These are not optional.
They are obligations—under CEDAW and under any honest notion of justice.
So let us stop pretending this is complicated.
It is not.
The problem is not clarity.
The problem is action.
Today, only a few of the Malaya Lolas remain alive.
They are still waiting.
We may speak of diplomacy.
Of sensitivities.
Of relations with Japan.
But there must be a line.
No nation should protect its diplomacy at the expense of its women’s dignity.
This is no longer about the past.
This is about who we are—right now.
A State that knows what is right—
and still does not act.
The Malaya Lolas do not need another advisory.
They do not need another discussion.
They need justice—
while they are still alive to receive it.
Because in the end, the question is simple:
When justice was already clear—
why did we still refuse to act?
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